


The End of the World

by DevilsInTheDe_Tales



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Canon, Banter, Canon-Typical Violence, Companionable Snark, Dirty Talk, Drinking, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Feelings Realization, Friends to Lovers, Oral Sex, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Rough Sex, Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-10-31 21:22:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10907721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevilsInTheDe_Tales/pseuds/DevilsInTheDe_Tales
Summary: In the harsh wasteland, Hancock and Nora have nothing to lose but each other.





	1. Out of an Orange-Colored Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hancock and Nora are forced to spend the night hiding in a building after a group of super mutants sets up camp outside. Staying hidden shouldn’t be too difficult, as long as they can stay quiet… but a bottle of bourbon and Hancock’s more-impure-than-usual thoughts might make that harder than he expected.

The sun, a heavy, autumn red-gold, fell over the rooftops of the crumbling buildings that lined Boylston Street, dragged beneath the horizon with the same steady death knell of a sinking ship. Hancock watched it disappear behind a wall of concrete, leaving nothing but grey in its wake. All grey as far as the eyes could see. God, how he hated the grey.  

His world was, and had always been, painted in shades of broken stone, parched grass, muddied water, and scorched earth. So when he saw color, as vibrant as he imagined Boston had been before the world went to hell, he took a moment to appreciate it. An orange sunset, the worn red fabric of his namesake’s coat, the rain-blue shade of Nora’s eyes. From the way she described her world, he wished he could see it through those eyes. But that world was long dead, and all that mattered was the one they lived in now.

Nora followed a few paces behind him, humming the jaunty melody of one of Diamond City Radio’s favorites low under her breath. Low enough that a nearby raider, if there were any, couldn’t hear, but  _ he _ could. Hancock found the sound of her voice comforting in a way he’d never admit to her, just knowing she was there, beside him. 

He lowered his shotgun as they reached a huge pile of twisted steel bars and uprooted asphalt making a barricade of the road. It was funny to think people used to drive on these streets. In the condition they were in now, you wouldn’t be able to travel more than a block before careening into a ditch or being blown sky-high by a frag mine. Nope, now it was hoof it by foot or bust.

A car, dented severely but still mostly intact, seemed to offer the path of least resistance, so Hancock climbed onto the trunk. He turned and offered Nora his hand, pleased to make out a smile on her lips in the fading light. 

“Look at you being a gentleman,” she teased lightly, taking his hand. 

Her skin felt warm and soft and smooth against his own, as it always did. Grasping Nora’s hand tightly, he pulled her onto the car with little effort. Hell, maybe he didn’t appear like much, but those one-hundred seventy-five pounds of lean ghoul muscle were stronger than they looked. Even if they weren’t, he would never drop her. Never.

“Looks can be deceiving, Sister.” He flashed her what he hoped was a devilishly handsome grin — which it most certainly would have been back when he was human — but the realist in him said the expression came off looking, well,  _ ghoulish.  _ He turned away before he could catch the reaction on her face, afraid of what he might see. It was one thing for the Diamond City bigots or those Brotherhood of Steel assholes to sneer at him for being a ghoul, but if Nora ever looked at him that way? There weren’t enough chems in the world to numb that pain. 

They crept along in silence for another block, until they reached their destination, Goetz Electronics. A good-sized chunk of the building facing the street had been torn off, whether by a skirmish, a rad storm, or the original bomb itself, Hancock couldn’t tell. No light shone from the interior — not that  _ that  _ was a reliable indication of danger. In Hancock’s experience, sometimes the quietest spots were the most deadly. 

He tipped his head back, peering beneath the rim of his tricorn at the looming building. “What is it we’re looking for again?” 

“It’s called an inhibitor coil. Dr. Amari said she needs it if she’s going to put me in that bastard Kellogg’s memory without turning my brain to mush.” Nora ejected the magazine of her modded .44 pistol and checked the rounds, a nervous habit Hancock noticed she performed before every scavenge.

For at least the past week,  _ something  _ had been scratching at the inside of his skull. A  _ feeling.  _ More specifically, a feeling about Nora. He couldn’t help but notice all the little things she did. But it was just because they’d run together long enough — how could he not notice, right? So many hours spent together. It didn’t mean— 

Hancock fidgeted with the old stars-and-stripes sash slung low on his hips and replied, distracted, “Uh huh. I hope you know what it looks like, because I sure as hell don’t.”

Nora snapped the magazine back into her gun. “I’ll know it when I see it. Just watch my back, okay?”

“You don’t have to ask me twice,” Hancock rasped, following her to the door. He played the double entendre like a joke, but like most jokes, this one was rooted in truth. He may have been a ghoul, but he was a red-blooded man, too, dammit, and any man with a pulse would notice the curve of Nora’s hips and the stretch of her shapely legs. Of course, when his thoughts were at their most impure, his mind wandered to the place where her hips and legs met, too, hugged so snuggly by the thin fabric of her vault suit. Round and firm as a crisp apple. 

Hancock felt his pants tighten. Now was  _ not  _ the time to be having those thoughts.

Nora cocked an eyebrow at him, one hand already on the building’s door. “Hancock, you okay?”

He shoved the unease down. Whatever these thoughts were, he wasn’t going to let them ruin this good thing they had going. No chance. “As good as the day I was born,” he replied.

Nora nodded at him once. “Great. Let’s do this.” 

He could see the fierce determination in her eyes. This job would bring her one step closer to solving the mystery of her broken family. When she did, would she stay? Or would they part ways, seeing each other only in passing, or maybe never again, ever? The possibility hit Hancock in the stomach like a bullet. Immediately, he felt guilty for even tangentially wishing she didn’t have a family tying her heart elsewhere. That he could have her all to himself.

His pipe dreams of the two of them blazing a path through the Commonwealth, side by side for as long as the wasteland would let them, didn’t matter. Maybe it made him a masochist or a martyr, or maybe just a fool, but he was going to help her. Helping her, helping  _ all  _ the good people of the Commonwealth, was who he was.

He watched Nora disappear into the building. As her hand swept behind the doorframe, Hancock’s pulse ticked up a beat, heightening his senses until he swore he could hear every bit of dust stirred by the breeze, smell every grain of gunpowder lingering from an old fight, and feel every nerve the wind touched on his rough skin. But this rush wasn’t the normal diving-headfirst-into-unknown-dangers variety. He swallowed hard. No, it was because of her.

 

***

 

Usually, Hancock wasn’t one to complain about a  _ lack  _ of things trying to kill them, but as he and Nora made their way through the building, there were fewer distractions to pull him from his thoughts than he would’ve liked. They easily dispatched a rusty, old protectron on the second floor, and the third and fourth stories had been devoid of action save for two radroaches, now splattered across the wooden floorboards. 

The fifth story, where they started their search, wasn’t large — a mostly open space filled with desks and filing cabinets. There were three “offices” at the far end of the floor, but the walls were so filled with holes calling them separate rooms seemed like a stretch.

Nora rifled through a steel box of components, bent over at the waist with her head out of sight. She murmured softly under her breath, occasionally cursing her target for its elusive nature. Hancock tried not to interrupt. 

His eyes kept wanting to roam in her direction, but he made a more conscious effort than usual to watch  _ both _ of their backs instead of just hers. His shotgun stayed trained on the darkest shadows in the room and he listened for what he couldn’t see. Each creak of the unstable structure sent a shiver down his spine, but that’s all they were: the groans of a tired, two-century-old building. 

“Aha! Found it.” Nora reemerged from the box, holding a glass cylinder containing a delicate-looking copper coil. 

It was a wonder anything like that survived so long, but when the majority of the human race had been wiped off the planet, it’s not like there were many survivors left who needed a… coil incubator thingy. Hell, most folks in the Commonwealth couldn’t read, let alone operate a computer. The only reason Hancock could even spell his own name was because his mother had been Ms. Martha McDonough, the lone schoolteacher in Diamond City when he was growing up. She made sure he had a good head on his shoulders.  _ And wouldn’t Ma be proud of me now?  _ Hancock thought.  _ Mayor of a town of renegades, with a taste for chems, and a face only a mother could— well, even she might’ve not loved this mug. _

Carefully, Nora packed the coil into an empty ammo container on her belt. Hancock felt a little surge of relief. Now they could high-tail it back to Goodneighbor and call it a night. Get a little time alone to think things over… 

“That wasn’t so hard. Anything else you need while we’re here?” he asked, hoping she’d say no. 

Nora brushed the dust off her hands, a pensive look scrunching her pretty features. “I could use some more stimpaks if you see any lying around. After our run-in with that raider group the other day, I’m running low.”

“What’s mine is yours,” Hancock answered, perhaps a little too quickly. “I’ll give ya as many as you want.”

Nora shook her head and frowned at him. “No, no I don’t want to cut into your stash. What if you need them?”

Hancock tried to hide the quiet desperation from his face. Nora was self-sufficient to the core — one of the qualities he admired most in her. Admired, except at that moment, when all he wanted to do was take a few hits of Jet in his room and lose his worries in the fog of the high. “If you won’t take ‘em from me, at least let me get KL-E-0 to cut you a good deal. But as for searching this place, I really think we should get going—” 

Nora’s head suddenly snapped up, her blue eyes alert and stretched wide. “You hear that?”

Hancock held his breath. Sure enough, he heard deep, guttural voices far below them that could only belong to one thing. “Supermutants. Motherfu—”

He met Nora’s eyes as he counted the voices. One, two, three, four… 

After a minute of listening in silence, Nora crept to Hancock’s side and whispered in his ear, her soft breath tickling his skin. “Sounds like a whole damn raiding party.”

“You got that right,” he replied in a husky murmur. His heart pounded harder. “I count seven of ‘em, and who knows what they’re packing.” 

They needed a plan, and fast, if the mutants decided to come upstairs. There’s no way they were taking on seven and walking away to tell the tale. 

Part of the wall had been torn away, leaving their floor open to the elements and the clear night sky. Hancock gestured to Nora and snuck to the edge of the building, then laid prone on the floor, his neck stretching out over the high drop. He gripped the edge of the splintered floor with white-knuckled hands as he peered down at the scene below. 

From this vantage point, he could see the super mutants laying out camp in and around the building’s foyer, blocking their exit. One squatted on the sidewalk, tossing pieces of a broken wooden chair into the already-glowing start of a fire. Another hammered nails the size of railroad spikes straight into the building’s concrete pillars. Each blow echoed off the surrounding buildings with a deafening ring. Apparently, the party wasn’t afraid of drawing attention to themselves. Not a good sign. 

When the mutant finished hammering, it strung up meat bags, heavy and dripping with blood. The third mutant Hancock spotted turned his stomach most of all. The creature sat on a pile of bricks, legs splayed as it tore the fingers off a severed human arm, one by one, and tossed them to its hound. 

Hancock pulled himself back from the edge with a sick, tight feeling in his gut. It didn’t look like they were leaving anytime soon. While he was scouting, Nora had quietly padded to the cracked window at the back of the room. She returned to his side as he stole a longing glance east toward Goodneighbor in the distance and picked himself off the ground.

She threw a thumb over her shoulder. “There’s a fire escape off the back—”

“Halle-fricking-lujah.” Hancock let out a deep sigh.

Nora’s brows furrowed in response. “—but it’s rusted off around the third story. Unless you want to crawl away from here with two broken legs, we’re not leaving that way.”

Hancock muttered a string of curses. The universe had a funny way of taking what he wanted, turning it inside out, and spitting it back at him. If he’d had hair, he probably would’ve dragged his fingers through it and torn it out at the roots, but he settled for running a gloved hand over the back of his head. “Guess we’re holing up for the night, then.”

Nora had her usual look of calm concern as she slipped the straps of her pack off her shoulders and gently lowered it to the floor. “Better pray they don’t decide to take a tour of the upper floors.” 

Going off of past experiences, Hancock guessed the chance of that was about fifty-fifty. The odds were, perhaps, slightly in their favor. There wasn’t anything in particular a super mutant was likely to need from an electronics store. At least, nothing worth the risk of having one of the dilapidated floors collapse under their massive weight. Besides, the mutants appeared to be quite content keeping their camp on the ground. So long as he and Nora were quiet, they might be able to wait out the night with the super mutants being none the wiser. 

The mutants were raucous enough as they went about roasting meat over their fire. He and Nora could speak in hushed voices, just above a whisper, without fear of being heard. 

“Hey, Hancock,” Nora hissed from where she’d wandered to the far side of the room. Hancock stalked across the floor. In the corner, between the damaged wall of an office and a cluster of desks, a small, abandoned encampment was hidden behind a row of cabinets. He saw a pair of rumpled, rolled-out sleeping bags, a gas lantern, a handful of spare bullets, and a bottle of bourbon. Good supplies, probably left behind in a rush, because few-to-no wastelanders would be willing to part with those things by choice. 

As it so often went, one poor soul’s loss was their good fortune. 

“Jackpot,” Hancock rasped as he picked up the liquor bottle and found it nearly full. 

Nora shrugged. “Entertainment  _ and  _ not sleeping directly on the floor? Pinned-down-by-super-mutants aside, I’d say it’s our lucky night.”

Hancock popped the top off the bottle and raised it to the spot where his nose used to be, then took a deep whiff. “Oh yeah, that’s the good stuff. Whattya say, dinner and drinks?”

Nora grinned and sat cross-legged on one of the sleeping bags. “It’s a date.” 

Hancock turned from her and lit the lantern, adjusting the gas to a dim glow.  _ A date, yeah right. If I could take her on a real date, it’d be way better than—  _

He squeezed his eyes shut. There he went again. What the hell was wrong with him with these thoughts? He eyed the bottle of bourbon. Well, that was one way to get his mind to shut up. 

Farther from the window now, Hancock easily drowned out the super mutants’ muffled voices. He relaxed a fraction and sat down opposite Nora as she pulled a can of cram, a box of sugar bombs, and a pair of spoons from her pack, laying them out in a makeshift picnic. “No cups,” he mused, raising the liquor in his hand. “Hope you’re not afraid of catching my cooties.”

Nora cocked a teasing eyebrow at him. “Why, should I be?”

Hancock laughed under his breath. “In terms of boy-girl cooties, the answer is no. In terms of ghoul-human cooties, the answer is still no.” He waved a hand in front of his face, gesturing at his rough skin. “Don’t worry, you can’t catch  _ this. _ ”

Nora chuckled but didn’t say anything confirming or denying whether she was, in fact, worried, or had ever even thought about it. Which of course upped Hancock’s anxiety a tick. He just  _ had  _ to throw in that little piece of knowledge, didn’t he? With all its implicit suggestion. It was true, though. There were no side effects from — Hancock’s brow heated at the thought — skin-to-skin contact between a ghoul and a human. He’d even tested that theory firsthand after moving to Goodneighbor, but it had been a decent amount of time. Mayoral duties kept him busy. Besides, it didn’t seem right for the mayor to sleep with one of his citizens. Abuse of power, and all.  _ But Nora doesn’t live in Goodneighbor _ , a little voice in his head insisted. 

Nora eyed the bourbon in his hand. “So, ladies first?”

“Go right ahead.” Hancock, hiding his surprise, handed her the bottle. Usually she wasn’t as gung-ho about the drugs and alcohol and other flavors of vice as he was. Was it terrible of him to find that side of her kinda… sexy?

Nora took a swig of the alcohol and smacked her lips. “Ah, that burns good.” The bottle dangled loosely from her fingertips as she held it out to him. “Your turn.”

Hancock swallowed hard as he took it from her, keenly aware of just how sensitive he was to Nora’s fingers brushing his own.

_ Fuck help me _ , he thought, tilting the bottle toward the sky and taking a  _ very  _ long sip.

 

***

 

“—so then Danse says all stern-like, ‘You fall in line, you stay in line.’” Nora snickered and took another sip from the half-empty bottle. “God, he’s such a tool.”

“Don’t disagree with you there,” Hancock replied, which was a mild way of conveying his feelings on the subject. As far as he was concerned, Danse and the rest of the Brotherhood of Steel were all a bunch of fucking assholes. He’d consider it a service to humanity if they took a long walk off a short pier in their frickin’ two-ton power armor.

Nora gave one last chuckle and passed him the booze. She sat on the sleeping bag next to him, both their backs against the wall, shoulder-to-shoulder. The lantern cast a soft golden glow over her face, making all her scrapes and bruises disappear in the dim light. Maybe it was just his buzz, but Hancock thought she looked damn near angelic, just sitting there smiling.

“I know you hate him,” Nora sighed. “And believe me, I don’t want to be working with the Brotherhood, either. Just until they help me find the Institute…” 

“You do what you gotta,” Hancock replied. “I ain’t gonna judge you when all you got are hard choices to make.”

He felt her lean a little heavier against his right shoulder. Assuming she was the same level of intoxicated as he was, she wasn’t drunk, but felt enough of the bourbon’s warm embrace to let her guard down a bit. He popped the top back on and set the bottle down between them. Better to quit while he was ahead. A few more slugs and who knew what personal thoughts he might let slip?

Even with the sedating buzz, Hancock almost jumped when Nora moved her hand to his leg and gave a gentle squeeze. “Thank you for understanding… for being here for me. No one’s ever had my back like you do, not even— not even before all this.”

For a moment, Hancock couldn’t find his words as he met her gaze, her eyes smoldering in the dark. His heart beat faster, loud enough he was sure Nora, hell, even the super mutants, could probably hear it. “Hey, I’m always here for you,” he murmured, low and husky. “And I consider myself damn lucky to have you as a friend.”

Nora dropped her gaze to the floor and pulled back a little. Fuck, had he admitted too much? Said the wrong thing? His pulse raced even faster. Hell, he’d laid all his cards on the table and couldn’t pull them back in his hand. They were out, plain for Nora to see. He’d practically admitted— 

Nora turned her gaze back to his face, seeming to hesitate to say what was on her mind as she looked at him through her lashes. “Hancock… have you ever thought about us as maybe more than just friends?”

Hancock’s breath caught in his throat. Holy left field, he hadn’t been expecting that. But maybe she was just asking that to draw the truth out of him, rather than offering it as a possibility… That wasn’t Nora’s style, though. She’d always been honest with him. 

Hancock took a deep breath. Fuck it, it was his turn to be honest with her.

“Heh, is it that obvious?” He studied her face for any hint of what she might be thinking. Saying those five words to Nora scared him more than he liked to admit — maybe he was completely misreading her? He quickly added, “But come on. You don’t want to wake up to this mug every morning. Wouldn’t wish that on anyone I cared for.” 

The words hurt to say, but if he gave her an out, gift-wrapped in some of his signature snark, maybe he could still salvage their friendship…

Mere seconds passed, but to Hancock, it felt like a small eternity before Nora looked at him again. She was sitting close enough he could smell the hubflower-infused soap she used to wash her hair, even over the musty odor of the abandoned building and the spicy-sweet scent of the bourbon. He recognized the stubborn determination in her eyes. Whatever she was going to say next, it was something she felt dead serious about.

“Who I fall for is my decision. And I’ve fallen for you.” She said it so surely, so confidently, like it was a conclusion she’d held for some time. 

Hancock couldn’t believe it. For a second, he wondered if perhaps the super mutants  _ had  _ found them, and cracked his skull open. Maybe he was dead, and this was heaven. But who was he kidding? If heaven existed, they sure as hell weren’t going to let him in. Which meant Nora was really saying these things— 

Hancock’s chest swelled and his throat burned from the emotion falling over him in a wave. Happiness. Pure happiness, like he hadn’t felt in a long time. 

He leaned closer to Nora and brought his hand to her chin, gently tilting her face up. Then, he pressed his mouth to her lips in a soft, perfect kiss. At least, he thought it was perfect. Nora’s lips were smooth and still held the sweetness of the sugar bombs she’d eaten earlier. 

But was she crazy? His lips were thin and rough — what could she possibly find appealing about that? It  _ did  _ help that he wasn’t a typical ghoul. The drug that caused the change had spared Hancock from some of the more distasteful side effects. For example, he wasn’t at all corpse-like. He was still very much a man, just one whose flesh had been scorched by radiation, whose eyes had darkened to that deep onyx shade, and whose life would stretch on for centuries. But the way Nora kissed him back, like he was the most desirable man in the world, could almost make him forget he was a ghoul at all.

Nora wrapped a hand around the back of Hancock’s neck, her fingernails dragging lightly over his skin and sending tingles down his spine. He put his hand on top of hers, intertwining their fingers, and moved her palm to his cheek. “You sure you’re okay with this?” he asked, pressing her hand to the rough, ridged skin of his face. 

Nora raised her free hand to touch his other cheek. “Hancock, you’re just the way I like you. I couldn’t care less that you’re a ghoul, so screw anyone who makes you feel ashamed.”

Hancock gave her a confident smile. Well, he’d offered her the out, but if she was into this, he was  _ not  _ about to complain. “Wasn’t thinking about the folks doing the shaming…” 

Nora returned his smirk as he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close to him, kissing her harder. Nora’s lips parted and her tongue caressed his own. God, her kiss felt good. 

A hopeless romantic at heart, Hancock would’ve been perfectly happy doing nothing more than kiss Nora all night, but as her tongue teasingly flicked along his lower lip, he had to admit that she was really fucking sexy, too. And he would gladly take this as far as she wanted.

Hancock was still sitting up on the sleeping bag with his back against the wall when Nora moved to straddle his lap. They were both fully clothed, but just feeling the warmth and weight of her body on top of him made Hancock harden instantly. 

He sat up further and ran his hands over her hips, stopping to palm the spot where her hips met the curve of her ass. Her body felt as firm, yet supple, as it looked, and he bit back a groan. 

They still had to stay quiet.  _ Very  _ quiet, if they didn’t want the super mutants to violently interrupt them. So he was the tiniest bit concerned when he moved to kiss Nora’s neck and she let out a soft moan.

His lips grazed her ear as he whispered, “Shh, love. Don’t want our neighbors hearing us, do we?”

Nora flashed a mischievous grin and rolled her hips, grinding against Hancock’s lap. His teeth bit down on the inside of his cheek. The harder his cock grew, the harder it was going to be to suppress his groans.

“You get off on the danger, don’t you?” he growled into her ear. 

Nora’s lips curved up at the edges. “And you’re telling me you don’t, Hancock?” She ran her hands under the fabric of his red overcoat and squeezed his upper shoulders, grinding down on him more firmly, with purpose. Hancock suspected she knew exactly how wild she was driving him.

Mmm, and the way she said his name, rolling off her tongue like a challenge. How was it that she could get him so hot and bothered with just a single word?  _ Hancock _ . 

He imagined her moaning his name, and decided he had to make it a reality. It may not have been a challenge she gave him, but it was exactly the challenge he was going to take on.

“Be careful,” he teased in a low rasp. “You might bring out the feral in me.”

Nora shot him a look that suggested he’d just given her a challenge of her own. She held his gaze as she reached up to her collarbone and slowly,  _ so  _ slowly, unzipped her vault suit. Hancock had, from time to time, mused over what she might wear under that thing. Turns out, the answer was  _ nothing _ .

The seam of the suit fell open in a deep V, the edges barely clinging to her breasts, revealing her smooth torso down to her navel. 

Hancock was dying to run his hands over her body, but he was also thoroughly enjoying the show she was putting on, so he kept his hands firmly on her thighs. Nora ran a fingertip from her navel up to her chest and tantalizingly eased the left sleeve of her suit off her shoulder. The fabric fell away, revealing a goddamn perfect breast if Hancock had ever seen one, taut and lush as a full raindrop about to fall from a leaf. 

He saw her nipple tighten in the brisk night air and his hips bucked the tiniest bit under her, involuntarily.  _ Control yourself _ , he thought, but god, he had never wanted someone so badly before. 

Leaving her other breast covered, Nora reached down and pulled Hancock’s gloves off, one by one. She lifted his right hand to her mouth and wrapped her lips around his middle finger. Holding his hungry gaze, she slowly drew his finger from the suction of her warm, wet mouth. The sensation went straight to his cock, already aching from being so hard, and he squeezed his eyes shut as they rolled back in his head. 

“You really know how to drive a guy crazy,” he growled as a wave of lightheadedness passed. In response, Nora slid the other sleeve off her shoulder, letting the top half of her suit fall around her waist. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” Hancock murmured, taking in the full sight of Nora’s exposed upper body. Like any wastelander, she had her fair share of scars. To Hancock’s eyes, they only made her more alluring, each one a reminder of her grit and guts, her willingness to fight the good fight. And there was nothing sexier in the world than that. 

Nora leaned forward, pressing her breasts against Hancock’s chest as she whispered in his ear, “Mmm, thank you… You know, you’re not so bad yourself.” She gave his lower lip a playful bite, then sat upright again and arched her back. 

Hancock took it as an invitation, running his hands over her hips, up her sides, and over her ribcage until he felt the undermost curve of her breasts. If Nora knew how fucking turned on he was, she probably wouldn’t expect him to take his time, but who said he couldn’t tease her back? After all, they had all night.

Lightly, he ran the edge of his thumb over the soft, fullest curve of her left breast. 

The teasing seemed to work. Nora shifted in his lap and arched her back further, the rise and fall of her chest speeding up. With his left hand, he tilted Nora’s face toward his and kissed her again. At the same time, he slowly, steadily, stroked his thumb over her breast, moving it higher until he ran his textured fingerpad over the tight peak. A soft cry escaped her lips. Hancock gave a pleased chuckle under his breath before kissing her even more deeply, methodically working her nipple between his thumb and index finger until it felt achingly hard. 

With their lips slightly parted as they kissed, Hancock could feel Nora’s breath come even faster.  _ Good.  _ He’d been around the block enough times to know how to please a woman, and if he couldn’t be the most attractive lover Nora had ever had, he’d damn well make sure to be the most skilled. 

Hancock lowered his mouth, running light kisses over her collarbone and along the top slope of her breast. 

When he exhaled over her nipple, she shivered. And when he took it into his mouth and sucked, firmly, steadily, working his tongue over the stiffened peak, she gave a quiet moan. “Fuck, Hancock, that feels so good.”

Mmm, yeah, he definitely liked the way she said his name like that. He applied more pressure, tugging at her nipple lightly, relentlessly teasing the sensitive tip. He lowered his right hand to where her legs were spread in a straddle on his lap and softly slipped his fingers under her, gently kneading the spot where her clit would be through her suit. If she  _ did  _ want him to fuck her that night, he was going to be a gentleman about it and make sure she was soaking wet first. As he worked his fingers in slow circles, he could feel his erection pressed against the back of his hand through his pants, strained and insisting. 

The pleasure was plain on Nora’s face when Hancock met her eyes again. “Hancock, I want you. All of you,” she breathed. “Tonight.”

He flashed a crooked grin. When she looked at him like that, he’d give her the fucking moon if that’s what she wanted. “You got me.” 

Nora sat back on her knees and kicked off her boots, then peeled off the rest of her vault suit until she wore nothing but her enchanting smile. 

Hancock pushed himself onto his knees, too, and sat back on the heels of his boots to get a better view. He must’ve had some dreamy-eyed look on his face because Nora raised an eyebrow at him. “Hancock?”

It was hard not to be fixated on her when she was right there in front of him. Of course, she’d been in front of him for months, but never like this. “Don’t mind me, just admirin’ the view.”

Nora giggled and moved closer, so she was crouching between his open thighs. Her fingers roved up to his chest and began unbuttoning his shirt. 

Hancock gently caught her wrist. “Maybe… leave that on for tonight. I’m a little worried there’s only so much ghoul you can handle.” He hated to sound insecure, but come on, naked ghoul bod was a lot to take in.

Nora’s expression turned pained and she gripped his lapels, then stretched her face up to kiss along his jawline. “You’re not going to scare me off, Hancock,” she whispered. “But if that’s what you want…” Her hands moved down to his belt buckle. “This is the only thing you really need to undo.” 

“Mmm,  _ that  _ I’m just fine with.” Hancock leaned back further on his heels to give Nora all the space she needed, hardening with anticipation at the sound of the metal buckle sliding over the leather strap. 

While his jacket and shirt were all part of the costume, his pants were regular, rugged, black jeans. Tentatively, Nora unbuttoned his fly and slid her hand down his pelvis. “Whoa,” she murmured appreciatively, taking his hard length in her hand. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you were packing  _ this.” _

“You never asked.” Hancock stifled a groan as she tightened her grip and slid her fingers up his shaft. “But if you like it now, wait ‘til I get to use it,” he growled, clenching his jaw against the waves of pleasure. Nora slid her palm over his swollen head, and circled her thumb over its sensitive underside. When his cock was fully erect, it wasn’t as rough as the rest of his skin, but still more textured than a regular man’s.  _ Ribbed for a lady’s pleasure,  _ women he’d slept with in the past had joked. 

As Nora began to stroke his shaft with more rhythm, Hancock ran a hand up her thigh and slipped his fingers between her legs. His pelvic muscles surged, making his cock jump as he felt her slick wetness. Hot damn, she really did want him badly. 

Nora shuddered as Hancock rested his thumb over her clit and slowly eased his middle finger between her lips. Fuck, she was tight and wet and hot. He pressed up with his fingertip, deep inside her, and when he found the sweet spot, Nora fell forward and moaned against his ear. “Oh yeah, right there.”

The head of his cock throbbed as Nora bore down on his finger, tightening as he slowly pumped his digit against her g-spot and his thumb against her clit. Her movements as she stroked his cock were growing less coordinated. Hancock took a definite amount of pride in working her up so much that she couldn’t think straight. But she seemed to notice that her efforts were being thwarted, so she gently pulled his hand away from her and pushed her palm against his chest. 

“Mmm, too much of a good thing, love?” Hancock questioned. 

She answered with a smoldering stare as she held his cock in one hand and bent forward, licking her tongue over his throbbing head. The blood rushed from Hancock’s brain. Goddamn, that felt good.

Nora ran her lips down the ridge of his shaft and back up again, taking him fully into her mouth. Her tongue slid along the edge of his head, over and over again in mind-numbing little swirls. Hancock tensed his hips, not wanting to accidentally thrust up into her throat as she tightened her lips and began to suck his cock in earnest.

Distantly in the back of his mind, Hancock wondered if their enemies far below might hear the firm, wet, sucking noises of Nora’s mouth on him, but he decided they were fine. As long as the two of them didn’t get much louder… 

Nora bobbed her head faster and Hancock became acutely aware that he was edging closer to coming. But it wasn’t time for that yet. No, not even close. Gently, he pushed Nora’s shoulders back, raising her to a kneeling position and touched her cheek, running the edge of his thumb along her lower lip. “I think it’s your turn.”

“Like I said, such a gentleman…” Nora smiled with anticipation as Hancock lowered her onto her back and spread her knees. Her pussy was pink and glistening in the dim lantern light. Inviting. 

He crouched forward and ran one hand over Nora’s taut stomach, down, until his palm rested on her neatly trimmed hair and his thumb circled her clit. He flicked his tongue against her opening, eliciting a tremble, then slowly ran his tongue along her lips and up, over that sensitive cluster of nerves. She tasted sweet and her skin felt velvety soft against his tongue. Hancock closed his eyes, breathing her in. Her scent stirred something primal deep within him. 

As he flicked his tongue steadily over her clit, Nora grabbed the edge of the sleeping bag beside her face and pressed it over her mouth, moaning into the fabric. 

“Shh,” he reminded her gently. He slid his left hand up her torso and squeezed her full breast, then lightly pinched her nipple between two fingers, making her shudder. “I don’t want to have to stop what I’m doing…”

“No, please. Don’t stop,” Nora breathed. It was all the encouragement Hancock needed. He went back to rubbing her clit with his thumb and gently probing the edges and inner walls of her opening with his tongue, noticing when she tightened or squirmed. He steadily, shallowly pumped his tongue in and out of her most intimate spot until both her thighs trembled wildly. “Hancock, I want you. Please—” she breathed, arching her back. “I want to come with you inside me.” 

Even though he had gone minutes without being touched, his cock instantly jumped at her words. God, this was it. Nora was giving herself to him. Nora, who could have her pick of any man in the wasteland… and she wanted to be with him. 

With two strokes of his hand, his cock was throbbing hard again. He took a deep breath, steadying his muscles. Holding his body up with one arm, Hancock positioned himself over her, spread beneath him, her skin flushed. She didn’t shy away from looking at him at all, which made Hancock feel like he could take on the world. 

He pressed the head of his cock against her opening and slid it along her spread lips, getting it slick with her juices. Readying to penetrate her. 

“Are you sure you want this?” he asked in a stern rasp, meeting her eyes. 

Nora intertwined her fingers behind his neck. “There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

With one arm tucked under her, Hancock pulled Nora against his chest and kissed her deeply. Then, he slowly pushed his cock past her tight barrier, steadily easing into her to his full length. Nora buried her face in the fabric of his overcoat and moaned as her pussy spasmed around him, adjusting to his wide girth. 

Hancock himself bit back a groan as she enveloped him. The rush was more intense than a hit of Jet, being inside her felt so good. 

Nora panted and grinded her hips against his. “Fuck, Hancock, you feel incredible. The way you fill me— so fucking good.” She shuddered.

Hancock smirked devilishly. “Believe me, baby, the feeling’s mutual.” 

After a few more seconds, when Nora’s gasping breaths calmed a bit, Hancock slowly pulled out until her opening strained against his aching head, then pumped his hips forward, thrusting into her again. 

He found a rhythm, slow at first, pumping his cock into her wet pussy, in and out. It felt so good, he could ride this high all night. He thrust into her a little harder as Nora trembled beneath him, then lifted one of her legs over his shoulder. The change in position spread her wider, and she let out a cry of pleasure as he plunged deeper into her still.

“Someone there?” a deep voice grunted from the camp below. 

A burst of adrenaline shot through Hancock’s veins. He froze, holding every muscle in his body still except his cock, which throbbed inside Nora of its own volition. He felt her tighten around him as her body responded and he bit down on the inside of his lip, fighting to maintain a stranglehold on his self control. Even with the threat of death around them, the primal part of him wanted nothing more than to keep filling her with his cock, feeling her tight lips stroke him until he spilled over. Fortunately, he had just enough strength of will to resist. 

“Hrmm, nothing there,” the ogreish voice concluded after a few seconds of silence. 

Hancock dipped his face down next to Nora’s. “If you can’t be quieter, I might need to gag you,” he teased in a low growl.

With a seductive pout, Nora pressed her mouth shut and zipped her fingers across her lips.

“Smart choice,” Hancock murmured affectionately as he began to pump into her with his cock again. He felt the tension build up in Nora’s body once more as her hips moved against him in rhythm with his thrusts. Her fingers dug into the sleeping bag and her breasts bounced with every jolt as he fucked her harder. 

Supporting himself with one arm, he reached a hand down to tease her clit — a move that had taken a bit of practice over the years. Even as her body seemed to want to buck him off, Hancock held his fingers firmly against her, providing relentless friction as his thumb circled. 

“Hancock— oh god— you’re going to make me come,” Nora breathed. 

He thrust more aggressively, giving his full length to her tight, little pussy. “Yeah, baby. Come for me. I want to feel it.”

He watched her face as her eyes scrunched shut and her brow creased. “Oh my god— Hancock—” She cried out and arched her back. Hancock felt her pussy seize up around his cock, clenching and unclenching his throbbing muscle. He continued thrusting into her, giving her body no quarter as he clasped a hand over her mouth. Nora’s hot breath steamed against his palm as he stifled her moan, her body writhing beneath his hips as she rode out the ecstasy. Her pussy desperately tried to milk the come from his cock, but he held it back. He wasn’t done with her yet.

See, he adhered to an old adage: every one for me, two for her. He pulled his hand away and Nora gasped, breathing heavily. 

“Fuck, Hancock— that was— that was something else.” Nora’s face and body glowed with a thin sheen of sweat. 

After a few seconds, when her breathing slowed, Hancock pulled out of her, still rock hard, and grinned. “How do you feel about an encore?”

Nora’s eyes widened as she noticed his still-throbbing erection. “You can keep going—?”

Hancock sat back on his boots. “I could go all night, baby. For us ghouls, longevity doesn’t only apply to lifespans, if you catch my drift.” 

As she processed this new information, Nora looked like she couldn’t believe her luck. “Umm,  _ yeah _ I want to go again.”

_ Excellent.  _ Hancock gestured a little circle in the air. “How do you feel about turning around and showing me that sexy ass of yours?”

Nora cocked an eyebrow suspiciously and Hancock chuckled under his breath. “Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna do anything you don’t want me to. Promise.” 

Nora’s smile, shy at first, turned mischievous as she got onto her hands and knees and turned to face away from him. “This position feels so… naughty.” 

Hancock couldn’t suppress the low groan in his chest as he took in the sight of her exposed pussy and voluptuous, curved ass. While every man had his favorite aspects of the female form, Hancock had always been more of an ass man himself. He ran his hands over both firm, round cheeks and wrapped his fingers around her hips. “Well, you just so happened to pick a very naughty ghoul.” 

He wasn’t going to tell her this, but he felt more comfortable with her looking away from him, probably because it tied back to his hope that she could see him as a normal man. Didn’t hurt that he really liked the view…

As any lingering insecurity melted away, he gave the thick curve of flesh where her ass met her hips a firm squeeze and pressed the head of his cock against her opening. He heard Nora suck in a short breath and felt the muscles in her lower back tighten. His fingers indented deeper into her hips. God, there was something hot about her anticipating his cock like that. 

He rubbed his head over her lips again, rewetting the tip, making her anticipation build. When he saw her glistening opening contract and release, seeming to yearn for something to fill and stretch it, he slowly entered her. Nora shuddered as her body offered more resistance this time, the different angle making her even tighter. 

“Are you okay?” Hancock asked. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her.  _ I mean, unless she asks me to...  _ He was open-minded like that. 

“Yes…” Nora rolled her hips around him in a languid figure-eight, stimulating herself with his member. “Fuck, yes. Keep going…” 

Hancock pressed further into her, inch by hard inch. His eyes rolled back in his head as she took him all the way to the base, squeezing him even tighter than he held himself on nights when he had the privacy to do so.

Mmm, but he was going to hold out long enough to make her come again. 

He grasped her by the hips and began to thrust faster, pistoning his pelvis with an untiring cadence. He could do this all night, all year, hell, the rest of his unnaturally long life. Because this,  _ this  _ was perfection.

However, Nora was a human and therefore not as inexhaustible as him, so he let himself edge closer to the brink. 

Seeing Nora in such a vulnerable, compromised position, spread for his taking and his alone,  _ really  _ brought the beast out of him. So when she hissed, “ _ Fuck. Yeah. Harder, _ ” he obliged, pounding her hard enough that her ass made a steady  _ slap-slap-slap  _ noise against his thighs. 

“Hmm, going for a little dirty talk, eh?” he growled, punishing her with his cock. “You’re naughtier than I thought.”

Nora’s words came in short bursts as Hancock hammered her. “I want you to— fuck me like— a dirty wastelander you— just caught stealing from Goodneighbor.” 

Hancock chuckled darkly, wrapping his arm around her to give her nipple just a  _ slightly  _ painful pinch. “Oh baby, I don’t think you know what you’re asking… Nobody fucks with my town and gets off lightly.” 

“Do it,” Nora panted. “I’ll tell you to stop if I need to.” 

_ Fuck _ , this was beyond his wildest dreams. Not only did Nora want him, but she might’ve been just as kinky as he was. And he could  _ absolutely  _ play along.

He pulled out of her and grabbed Nora’s chin in his hand, leaning over to snarl in her ear. “So, you think you can steal from Goodneighbor, Scavver? Give me one reason I shouldn’t slit your fucking throat right now.” 

Nora shivered, but he could see a hint of a smile at the edge of her lips. “I’ll— I’ll do anything you want. Please don’t kill me.”

The super mutants below had grown louder than before, boisterously talking over one another, so Hancock decided to take the chance they wouldn’t hear. 

“Please don’t kill me— what?” He ran his palm over her ass, drew it away, then snapped it back against her skin in a sharp spank. Nora jumped. “You should show a little respect for the guy who runs this goddamn town.” 

Nora trembled. “Please don’t kill me,  _ sir. _ ” 

A rush of arousal went straight to Hancock’s dick. It seemed Nora knew how to play along, too.  _ Damn _ , that turned him on. 

He sat up again and grabbed Nora’s thighs, then roughly pulled her back toward him. With her still on all fours, he spread her legs a little wider, then tapped the head of his cock lightly against her clit, taunting her. “You’ll do  _ anything _ , you say?”

“Mhmm… I mean… yes, sir,” Nora murmured in a sexy whimper. 

“I could use you any way I please…” Hancock mused, sliding the head of his cock against her opening. “Just use you for my pleasure as a way to stop my balls from aching?”

Nora shuddered again with a soft moan. “Yes…”

Hancock lowered his voice to its huskiest, most threatening growl. “Then put your fucking face on the floor.” He wound his fingers in her hair and shoved her head roughly against the sleeping bag, imposing over her. 

He kept a firm grip on Nora’s thigh with his other hand so she couldn’t get away, and with one hard thrust, penetrated her fully. 

When she moaned in pleasure, he didn’t hesitate to go straight into fucking her at a ruthless pace. He hadn’t unleashed like this in a long time, and if there was a feral side within him, this felt pretty damn close to letting it out. 

“When I’m done with you, you’re not gonna walk straight…” He felt Nora tighten at his words and continued to fuck her roughly, with thrusts meant to ache.

Having his way with Nora felt so fucking good, but as he grew closer to the edge, all he could think about was making her come, burying his cock in her sweet pussy, and finishing deep inside her. 

“Hancock— I’m getting close,” Nora cried, her cheek pressed into the sleeping bag. “Stop—” 

Hancock’s core tightened and he froze, dropping his threatening tone. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Nora twisted her body, turning her dusky blue eyes at him. “Nothing’s wrong, I just—” She was breathing hard, her face flushed, and she looked a little bashful. “I want to see you when you come.” 

Hancock’s heart melted. She was so goddamn sweet. “C’mere, beautiful,” he murmured, pulling her around to face him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and fell into his deep kiss. Then, she gently pressed a palm to his chest. Hancock obliged and sank onto his back as Nora crawled over his body to straddle his hips. As much as he loved fucking her on her hands and knees, it didn’t beat being able to see her smiling face.

Bracing her hands against his chest, Nora eased down onto him until he filled her completely. Hancock groaned. He ran his hands over her soft breasts and down to rest on her waist as she rode him, slowly at first, but gaining speed. He squeezed his eyes shut, letting the exquisite feeling consume him as she stroked his cock closer and closer toward climax. 

He opened his eyes again to see Nora’s brow scrunched and her lips parted slightly. “This feels so good, Hancock. I’m— I’m going to come again. Are you close?”

“Fuck yeah,” Hancock groaned. Every move of Nora’s hips brought his throbbing cock to the brink. “I’m right there with you, baby.”

That seemed to be enough to push her over the edge. He felt her clench around him as she fell forward onto his chest, crying out against his mouth as she kissed him. “Hancock—!” 

Her hot tightness seized around his member and, this time, he didn’t hold back. Sparks of light burst across his vision as his cock released its tension, pulsing and pumping his hot come as deep inside her as it would go. 

Nora folded against him, breathing hard, as his groin tensed one final time, drawing forth the last drop of come from his twitching cock. Hancock groaned as his limbs went slack against the ground.

“Holy fuck.” He let out a deep breath, coming down from the rush. He stroked Nora’s hair and wrapped an arm around her warm chest to hold her close to him. 

“Yeah, that was— something,” she agreed, rolling off his chest. In a moment of dread, Hancock thought she was going to leave, but she stretched out beside him with her head half on his shoulder. He wasn't sure what to say. The night had been so perfect, there was no way he was going to ruin it now by saying something dumb. So he kept his mouth closed and just held her loosely with his arm under her shoulder. Nora didn’t say anything, either. She might have fallen asleep, but he wasn’t about to ask. 

When their skin had cooled from the night air, Hancock pulled the other sleeping bag over them and put out the lantern. He lay awake for awhile with his thoughts, until finally his eyelids grew heavy, his consciousness wavering.

“Goodnight, love,” he whispered. He pressed his lips to her temple, and with a final deep breath, let sleep take him.

 

***

 

When Hancock woke, the sun was in the sky, a clear blue day, and Nora was already dressed. She sat on an overturned wooden box, stirring what smelled like a mug of coffee grounds boiling over a small tin-can fire. 

He blinked against the light and stretched his arms over his head, groaning. “Morning, Sunshine.” 

As the events of the previous night came rushing back to him, he hesitantly looked at Nora’s face, terrified that it might be filled with regret or shame or disgust. 

To his great relief, she smiled back at him with the relaxed, pleased expression of a satisfied lover. “Morning. Sleep well?”

“Well enough.” He chuckled and zipped his fly from within the sleeping bag, then adjusted his tricorn hat. “Ya know, my dreams used to be a pleasant little escape from reality. However, you’ve just set the bar higher...”

Nora giggled and Hancock thought he saw her blush. “I’ll try not to compete. Don’t want to ruin your dreams for you.”

Hancock got to his feet and sidled over to her. “Too late, it's no competition at all.” He hesitated, still trying to convince himself the night’s events had really happened, then decided to test the theory by giving her a soft kiss on the top of her head. Nora beamed up at him, tipping her head back and pulling his face toward hers for a real kiss. Guess it was true after all. 

After breakfast, they packed up and headed out toward Goodneighbor. The super mutants were long gone, Nora told him, having departed their camp before sunrise. 

“We’ll have to get trapped in empty buildings more often,” Hancock joked, resting his shotgun over his shoulder. He took a deep breath, appreciating the relatively fresh air. This day was not unlike most of theirs, with Nora and him walking along a long and dusty road, and yet it was totally different. 

She laughed and adjusted the pack on her back. 

Hancock opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing, but there was something on his mind that needed to be voiced. She had to know what last night meant to him. “Nora?”

She turned her attention toward him. “Yes?”

Hancock steeled himself. “Look, I hope this isn’t too much, but I just wanted you to know, you’re… well, you’re the most important person in my whole damn life.”

Nora walked a little closer to his side, then stopped and gave him a knowing smile. “Too much? Come on, Hancock. It’s me and you against the world. Ever since I showed up in Goodneighbor, it’s been me and you…” 

“Against the world,” he echoed. He laughed deep under his breath and his mouth stretched into a wide grin. “Yeah, it has, hasn’t it?” For the first time in a long time, everything in his life felt right. It was them against the world, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“In that case…” He slung an arm over Nora’s shoulder and gave her a smirk as devilishly handsome as a smirk could be. “Come on, love,” he crowed as they headed toward whatever dangers lay ahead. “Let’s get this freakshow on the road.”


	2. Flash, Bam, Alakazam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora is acting distant after their night together, but when Hancock takes her to Goodneighbor’s Third Rail and they get into a heated argument, they do a lot more than talk it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A mostly canon world except Nate was Nora's fiance, not husband, and they didn't have a child. Her father was shot in the vault and her younger brother, Shaun, taken by the Institute.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

“Mayor.”

“Citizen.” Hancock tipped his tricorn toward the neighborhood watchman who greeted him, a male ghoul in a tan suit with a tommygun in hand. 

Being back in Goodneighbor always felt a bit like disarming a frag mine — a relief, like he didn’t have to watch his every step. Tall junk walls separated them from whatever else crept around the Commonwealth’s Back Bay and rusty turrets gave a steady  _ tick-tick-tick _ . 

From where he stood just within the entrance gates, Hancock heard other familiar sounds: K-L-E-0 speaking vague threats in her low monotone to a customer at her shop; the drunken snores of a drifter asleep on a park bench; the soft notes of distant singing rising from the subway grates that led to the Third Rail. 

Hancock let out a deep breath. Here, he was safe — relatively — and among his people. Home.

Hancock noticed the fellow ghoul shift his focus to frown at Nora. Nora had been running with Hancock for a couple months now, but the fine people of Goodneighbor were slow to warm up to outsiders. 

Not the freaks and drifters and ghouls who showed up because they had nowhere else to go — they were embraced with open arms. But Nora… Nora didn’t belong in Goodneighbor. She was a true outsider in their town. Pretty, charming, skilled — she could, and had thus far, been accepted by nearly every group she encountered. So, whether it was jealousy or a sense of no shared experiences, the people in Goodneighbor had defaulted to treating Nora with cold indifference. 

Hancock turned to Nora. It had been a long day of traveling and the autumn sun was already setting in the sky. They hadn’t exactly talked about the previous night during their trip, and as the hours ticked by, Hancock felt less and less like he knew what to say. The back of his throat burned as a small voice in his head said,  _ maybe it was only a one-time thing. Something that happened in the heat of the moment. Something she’d like to pretend had never occurred.  _

He gripped the shotgun in his hands tighter. “I’m gonna offload some of this salvage to Daisy, but then you wanna grab something to eat at the Third Rail?”

“Yeah, sure,” Nora replied, shifting her pack on her shoulders. She looked distracted, not quite meeting his eyes. 

Hancock forced a smile. “Great. Cool… If you want, you can—” 

“I’ll just be in my room at the Rexford. Meet you at eight-thirty?” Nora raised her eyebrows at him. She held her hands up by her shoulders, gripping the straps of her pack in a way that seemed distinctly offstandish. 

_ Ouch.  _ He’d been about to ask if she wanted to stay at the Old State House with him, but that about answered his question. Hancock’s gut twisted uneasily, a mix of confusion and dread. Nora had seemed so warm when they’d briefly talked that morning. What had she mulled over during the long trek back? Why the cold shoulder now?

“Yeah, okay. I gotta pick up some chems from Fred anyway, so I’ll just meet ya there,” Hancock muttered huskily. He walked over to Daisy’s storefront, trying to look as apathetic as possible while he watched Nora from the corner of his eye. She quickly strolled down the sidewalk and disappeared around the corner.

“Tough day, Hancock?” Daisy rasped, raising a hairless brow at him.

“Yeah,” Hancock scoffed moodily, digging a bent cigarette from out of his jacket pocket. “You could say that.” 

Daisy’s black gaze drifted to the place where Nora had been walking, then back to Hancock. “The vault dweller, huh? Wouldn’t have taken you as the type to go for some sheltered Mary Sue like that.”

“Hey, watch yourself,” Hancock snapped coldly. “It ain’t like that.”  _ She ain’t like that either. She’s clever and brave and most definitely has a bad side—  _

_ Goddamit.  _ Frustrated, Hancock pulled a handful of scrap components — a fuse, a trio of gears, some frayed wiring — from his pack and threw it on Daisy’s counter. 

“Okay, okay, geez,” Daisy grumbled, sorting through the junk with bony fingers. “Forget I said anything,  _ Mayor. _ ”

Her sarcastic tone grated his nerves further. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about Nora?  _ If you didn’t want her in your thoughts, you probably shouldn’t have slept with her, you fucking idiot _ , he berated himself. 

He stuck the cigarette between his stiff lips and lit the tip, sucking in a breath sharp enough to make the ember flare a bright cherry-red. He pulled the smoke into his lungs and then exhaled a cloud, savoring the rich tobacco-and-ash taste. A little jolt ran through him as the nicotine hit his bloodstream, and he took another drag. One good thing about being a ghoul: no cancer. 

He could indulge in all his vices and rest assured that they wouldn’t be the end of him. All of them, except maybe Nora.

Daisy counted out a pile of caps and tossed them onto the counter. “I’ll give ya thirty-five for the lot.” 

Hancock swiped up the caps and shoved them in his pocket, then grumbled something like a thanks as he headed toward his home. Although, calling the State House his home didn’t feel entirely accurate. Sure, he lived there, in a decent-sized room with a balcony overlooking the town square, but so did an ever-changing line-up of drifters and displaced citizens, not to mention his trusty bodyguard, Fahrenheit.

Hancock had been deeply, deeply surprised when Fahrenheit not only  _ didn’t  _ loathe Nora, but seemed, in her steely, reserved way, to have taken a liking to Hancock’s new companion. He thought maybe his right-hand would’ve been jealous over being “replaced,” but he was beginning to suspect that Fahrenheit preferred to run the town in his stead over serving at his side. All the better, he supposed, as it worked out for everyone.  _ Assuming what me and Nora got going doesn’t fall apart _ . 

Hancock pushed the dismal thought aside as he strode into the State House and up to his room, heading straight toward his dresser. His mind ached for a hit of Jet to push his concerns away. 

He picked one of several canisters up from the top of the bureau and was about to raise it to his ruined lips when the sound of something clinking against glass made him jump. 

He whirled and saw Fahrenheit with a smug look on her face. She sat in one of the tattered armchairs in the corner of the room with one leg crossed over the other and a glass of whiskey-on-the-rocks in her hand, the open bottle on the table next to her.

“Shit, don’t scare me like that,” Hancock growled, slapping the Jet back on the dresser top. “It’s a good way to get your head blown off.”

“Hey, Boss,” Fahrenheit said, her tone all casual sarcasm. “Say, weren’t you planning on coming back last night? Hmm… lemme think. What coulda kept you…?” She shot him a knowing look.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” Hancock turned to face the dresser and pretended to rifle through its top drawer. 

The ice cubes clinked in Fahrenheit’s drink again as she leaned forward to rest her elbows on her armored knees. “Come on, Hancock. First I pass Nora in the street beelining it to the Rex with a guilty look and thousand-yard stare. Then you come storming in here.” She inclined her head. “Something happened.”

“Hey,” Hancock snapped. “Ever think it’s none of your damn business? You don’t see me poking my nose into whatever you and Magnolia have going on.”

Fahrenheit’s mouth stretched into a toothy grin as she spread her arms into a come-at-me pose. “Wanna know about me and Mags? Ask away. I ain’t shy.”

Hancock waved her off and planted his elbows on the dresser top. He sank his head in his hands and let a few seconds pass in silence before letting out a deep sigh. “Shit. She looked guilty?”

“Mhmmmm.” Fahrenheit drew out the sound as she nodded her half-buzzed head, keeping her shrewd gaze fixed on Hancock.

Clearly, he hadn’t been imagining things when he thought Nora seemed distant. Hancock took a deep breath before meeting Fahrenheit’s eyes. “Guilty. What the hell do you think that means?” 

Fahrenheit cocked a ginger eyebrow. “You tell me. I’m the one with  _ nooo  _ idea what happened.”

Hancock scowled. “Fine, we slept together, all right? Want me to say it out loud again?”

“Nah,” Fahrenheit replied with feigned disinterest, leaning back in her chair. “I already knew. So whatcha gonna do about it, Cassanova?”

Hancock sank into the couch across from her and hastily poured himself an iceless glass of whiskey. He threw it back, grimacing as the burn hit his throat. “What am I gonna do about what?”

Fahrenheit’s lips turned up at the corners. “Your  _ lady love _ . Obviously. Whatcha gonna do about Nora?”

Hancock huffed and tipped his face toward the ceiling, letting his head fall back against the couch. “I got no clue. Things seemed to be going so well, and last night was—” His throat ached, but not from the drink, so he threw back another finger of whiskey to at least displace the pain. “Well, I thought last night was really good. But, fuck, I guess I was wrong.”

“Huh. You’re not usually one to misread the ladies, Boss,” Fahrenheit mused.

Hancock gave a halfhearted shrug. “Yeah, well, first time for everything…” He’d had his fair share of one-night stands and whirlwind trysts, but what he felt for Nora didn’t fit either of those descriptions. She was… uncharted territory. It frustrated, scared, and captivated him all at once. 

Fahrenheit rolled her eyes and set her drink down on the side table. “Look, Boss, I’m not gonna tell you what to do—” 

Hancock shot her a scathing look. “But?”

Fahrenheit chuckled. “ _ But _ , you should really go talk to her.”

He knew she was right, but just like having to tell a drifter they couldn’t sleep sprawled across the front steps of the Memory Den or start an open fire in the basement of the Third Rail, it was a task he really wasn’t looking forward to. Violent confrontations in the wasteland were one thing, but talking things out with people who were on his side? Not his strong suit. 

As tempting as it was, Hancock decided to hold off on the Jet. Better to talk to Nora with a clear head.  _ ‘Cause see where bein’ intoxicated got us last night.  _

The memories of Nora’s soft skin, gentle kisses, and floral scent all whirled in his head, so fresh that if he closed his eyes, he could almost smell her, taste her, hear her whispers in his ear.

_ Hancock.  _

A shiver ran down his spine, but it only made his stomach sink lower. To know how good things could be with Nora and never find that happiness again might’ve been worse than never knowing it at all.

With his hands slung low in his pockets, Hancock shuffled out of the State House and headed toward the old Hotel Rexford. The building lay at the far end of town, a shabby remnant of its former glory days thanks to its owner, a two-bit kingpin named Marowski. 

Marowski was a genuine piece of crap, but he’d never done anything to get thrown out of town. When nearly every person within a square mile of Goodneighbor had some history, habit, or vice to contend with, you had to royally screw up to get the boot. Besides, if there was one thing Hancock tried to always avoid, it was being a hypocrite, and he probably had the most blood on his hands of all of them. 

When he walked in the front door, Nora was already waiting in the lobby. She’d changed out of her vault suit into a button-up shirt and skirt, and it looked like she’d run a comb through her hair. 

Hancock gave her a slick wave, like seeing her was  _ no big deal _ , then swallowed hard. He could handle this. He was John Fucking Hancock, after all! He’d be lying if he said he didn’t have ladies swooning over him, even with this mug. He just had to talk to Nora like the charismatic man he was and everything would be fine.

_ Right? _

He had hoped she’d still be in her room so they could talk in private, but perhaps talking in private was exactly what Nora wanted to avoid. He’d have to get her alone later.

Nora smiled at him as he approached, but the light didn’t reach her eyes. 

_ Well, this is off to a fantastic start,  _ Hancock thought. He left his hands slung casually in his pockets. “Hey, Nora. So, uh, dinner?”

“Yeah, that sounds good. I’m, well, pretty famished,” Nora said a bit stiffly. 

Hancock raised a hand to rub the back of his neck. “Yeah, a long day,”  _ and night, _ he added in his head _ ,  _ “will do that.” He eyed Fred Allen, Goodneighbor’s resident chem dealer, across the room. “I’m just going to pick up some things, then we can head over to the Rail.”

Hancock excused himself and went over to where Fred stood leaning against the wall. 

“Hey, hey, hey, if it isn’t the head honcho himself,” Fred said, straightening his posture as Hancock approached. “What’ll it be today, Boss? Mentats? Just got in a new shipment.” Like a flasher, Fred whipped open his jacket, revealing the many pockets of chems inside. 

The gears in Hancock’s head turned. Here he was, using chems again to numb the bite of reality. He stole a look over his shoulder at Nora, who herself looked deep in thought. Was she embarrassed about letting herself get a little freaky last night? Or was it worse than that? Maybe she was disgusted that she’d let him touch her at all. Nausea crept into Hancock’s stomach, reminding him of a bitter truth.

He fucking hated himself. As far as he’d come over the past few years, that one fact still remained.

“Mayor?” Fred prompted again. “Which is it gonna be tonight? Jet? Mentats? Psycho?”

“All of them,” Hancock muttered. “Whatever it takes to get me gone.”

Nora stared at the handful of chems as he walked back to her side. “Wow, that’s quite the haul. Throwing a party or something?”

The hint of judgment in her voice, or maybe it was just nosey questioning, irked Hancock somewhat, but it was the least of his worries. The noose around his heart tightened, just thinking about all the infinitesimal ways his impending conversation with Nora could go wrong. 

“No.” He stuffed the chems in his pocket. “Just got a good feeling I’m gonna need them later.” 

 

***

 

The evening was already in full swing by the time Hancock and Nora got to the Third Rail. The warm air in the underground bar swirled around his head, thick with smoke, the scent of alcohol, and the animated chatter of its patrons. From behind the bar, Charlie raised an armature toward Hancock, his optical sensor dilating, and a few other patrons tipped their hats. Hancock took Nora to the same table he always sat at when he swung by to check on the establishment: back corner of the room, furthest away from the stage, but close enough to get Charlie’s attention for a drink.

Hancock could barely eat the piece of grilled radstag on the plate in front of him, instead opting to pick at the bones with his fork, digging them to splinters until he could see the marrow. He couldn’t help but notice that Nora, too, didn’t eat much of her salisbury steak, despite her earlier claims of hunger. So, instead of eating, they sat across from one another, awkwardly pretending everything was fine. 

Hancock couldn’t look at Nora’s face without seeing her pretty features in the throes of pleasure like they’d been last night. It was a look that’d be burned into his memory for as long as he lived, no matter how many hundreds of years that wound up being. The contrast between that look and the expression of slight unease that Nora wore now was agonizing. 

Instead, he tried to keep his focus on Magnolia, the lounge singer of the Third Rail and the gal on every guy’s mind in Goodneighbor. Well, every guy except Hancock. The svelte brunette crooned into the microphone on the stage behind Nora, clutching the stand sensuously between two hands as she swayed her sequin-clad body to the music. She had a band behind her, a trio of ghouls who called themselves The Fright, one on the sax, one on the drums, and the third strumming a bass. 

“She’s really talented, huh?” 

Hancock’s attention snapped back to Nora. “Huh? Oh, Mags? Yeah, she’s uhh, got the best set of pipes this side of the Commonwealth, if you ask me. Moved here from Diamond City right around the time I did.”

“I know you’ve mentioned living there before, but—” Nora took a sip of her Gwinnett and looked down at the table. “If you don’t mind me asking, why’d you leave? Diamond City’s so much, umm,  _ bigger _ than Goodneighbor.”

Hancock could almost hear the other adjectives in her head.  _ Bigger and better and cleaner and prettier…  _

“You wanna know about me?” He shook off the itch of annoyance and stretched his hands behind his head. “My favorite subject…”

In truth he  _ did  _ mind her asking, only in the sense that now was not the time he felt like going down that rabbithole. 

He could ramble on and on about the present, spinning tales or cracking jokes, but talking about his past was somewhat harder, even with someone like Nora. Still, he could give her the short version. “Called Diamond City home back when I had a smooth set of skin. Wasn’t half bad, until my brother decided to get elected mayor.”

Quick to register what he meant, Nora frowned. “Wait, you’re telling me McDonough’s your brother?”

Hancock’s jaw tightened. “Yep. In the flesh.” 

“Wow…” Nora murmured, looking like she regretted asking. “Small world.”

Hancock scowled inwardly. She’d brought it up, so she was going to hear it, even if it wasn’t a nice story. “His campaign ran on an anti-ghoul platform. Maybe you noticed, but there’s no one as handsome as me walking around the Big Diamond.” Hancock gestured to his rough face. 

“I guess I never noticed there aren’t any ghouls there,” Nora said guiltily. “What happened?”

“Whatd’ya think?” Hancock asked, an edge to his voice that wasn’t necessarily directed at her. “The people turned on the ghouls, neighbor on neighbor. Drove them out of the city. Most ended up dead, or just straight-up disappeared.” His chest tightened.

“That’s terrible,” Nora murmured, genuine pity crossing her face. 

Hancock threw back the rest of his whiskey and cleared his throat. His gaze landed on a ghoul couple sitting on a nearby sofa, laughing. Happy. “It was. Anyway, after that I turned ghoul and wound up in Goodneighbor.”

“You… turned ghoul?” Nora squinted her eyes at him.

Hancock rocked his chair onto its back two legs and spread his arms. “What, you thought I was born like this?”

Seemingly embarrassed, Nora crossed her arms. “ _ No _ , I just thought most ghouls turned right after the war. You’re talking like ten years ago, right?” 

Hancock felt a little bad for giving her snark — there were moments when he forgot she didn’t grow up with this nonsense around her, but had been dropped into it like a tiny fish in a wide, hostile sea. “A lot of them did, yeah. Others over the years. But I’m  _ special.  _ Turned after taking an experimental radioactive drug.” He gave a dry, husky laugh. “Still dealing with the side effects, but the high was  _ so  _ worth it.” 

There was a much darker side to that particular story, but that was for another day.

“All right, folks. We’re gonna take a short break, but we’ll be back in a split, so don’t go far,” Magnolia interrupted from the stage with a wink. Without the cheerful music, the room suddenly felt much more somber to Hancock. Dark and underground. Not unlike a grave.

“Must’ve been some high…” Nora replied to Hancock, sounding unconvinced. She looked down to where her hands fidgeted in her lap. Seemed she was done trying to make small talk, because she said, “Hey, Hancock? I gotta talk to you about—” Her face reddened enough that Hancock could see the change in the dim light. “—about last night.”

Hancock rocked his chair forward again. Fuck, here it was. The coup d'etat. The final knife in his throat. His heart pounded painfully against his ribs. “Yeah, of course we can talk. What’s on your mind?”

Nora’s eyes shifted around the club. “Can we just… step somewhere a little more private?” 

Didn’t matter to Hancock where he got his heart torn out, but he stood and led her to the short hallway that connected the main bar area to the VIP lounge. People could still see them, but at least they were a bit out of earshot. 

Nora’s arched brows pinched together as she stared into his face. “Look, I need to stay focused on finding Shaun. So, a relationship with you—” 

His heart lurched.  _ Ouch.  _ It’s not as though he truly believed she’d say something like,  _ that was the best night of my life, Hancock —  _ he’d been expecting this — but hearing the shutdown aloud hurt all the same.

Hancock raised his hands defensively. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hotshot. Who ever said anything about going steady? That’s a little presumptuous, don’t you think…” 

He hadn’t meant to say something so  _ dickish _ , but some self-preservation instinct within him blurted it out. If Nora saw how disappointed he was, if the respect she held for him turned to pity, he wouldn’t be able to stomach it. Better to piss her off and keep her as a friend than spill his guts and turn into a charity case.

Nora’s scowl deepened, and Hancock thought he saw a glint of hurt mixed in with the scorn. It brought him no pleasure. 

“Yeah, yeah. Look, I know your reputation, Hancock. If you think the women of Goodneighbor don’t talk, you’re dead wrong, ‘cause they  _ all  _ have something to say.”

Hancock scoffed. “The fuck does that mean?” His anxiety was quickly shifting to an angrier place. She made it sound like he’d slept with the whole goddamn town, when really it was like six or seven people, max. Nora may have come from the Era-of-the-Picket-Fence, when premarital sex was even a concept, but for Goodneighbor, his number wasn’t ridiculous at all. 

Nora looked exasperated and even a bit embarrassed as she sputtered, “I mean that I know you don’t have  _ girlfriends  _ or— or  _ relationships _ . Not that I’m saying I’d even  _ want  _ to be your girlfriend or anything—”

Hancock interrupted her with a bitter laugh. “Well you’re in luck, doll, ‘cause being my girlfriend ain’t something you gotta worry about. So if you don’t want that, and you’re convinced  _ I  _ don’t want it — ‘cause you seem to know what I want better than I do — guess it works out for both of us.” 

Nora’s face contorted. She looked on the verge of either tearing his throat out or crying. God, he hoped she wouldn’t cry. He couldn’t bear to see her cry because of him. But he could do with the throat tearing.  _ Just put me out of my misery _ , he thought to himself.  

Hancock’s stomach sank as he saw Nora’s eyes take on a glassy sheen, water pooling at the edges. 

“Christ, Hancock, I’m just saying I don’t want to be another notch on your belt. I don’t think I could handle that—” A sob interrupted her sentence and she turned away from him, raising a hand to cover her face. 

Hancock’s expression went slack as his anger subsided almost immediately. “Nora, no— you’re not— is that what you think?”

Nora threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know what to think about this. About  _ you _ .”

Hancock’s temper came sizzling back. What the hell had he done to make her think he was such a dog? “Do you not remember the conversation we had, oh, all of  _ this morning  _ ago? What part of ‘most important person in my life’ didn’t you hear?”

Nora’s snuffling paused, but when she didn’t answer, he continued. “If you thought that was just pillow talk, I got news for you, baby. That was me spilling my damn heart out.” His voice had risen to nearly a shout. 

More than a few of the Third Rail patrons shot him wary glances — they knew their mayor wasn’t one to be fucked with — but no one said a word.  _ Let them stare _ , Hancock thought stormily. 

Nora’s face grew stern. “Hancock—”

His brow tightened as he stood opposite her. At only an inch or two taller, they were nearly face-to-face. He jabbed a finger at her chest. “Next time you get to judging me, how ‘bout you go off my actions instead of the town gossip?” he continued to rant. He knew he should stop, but all the tension he’d bottled up over the past day, the past weeks, came pouring out.

“Hancock—” Nora interjected, sharper this time.

“Here I thought I’d earned your trust.” His hands fell to his sides, tightening into fists as though he could wring all the anger from his body. “And if ya did trust me, well… you might actually be surprised—”

Hancock was going to say more, but was interrupted when Nora threw herself forward and pressed her lips against his. For a second, he stood there stunned until the surprise wore off, and by then his back was bumping against the tiled wall as Nora crushed her body against him, throwing her arms around his neck. 

This was…confusing. Wonderfully, wonderfully confusing. He still felt spitting mad, but it wasn’t enough to snuff out his desire for her. What was it that people said? Hate and lust are two sides of the same coin. With how much he’d veered between highs and lows over the past day, Hancock believed it.

“What— oh, fuck it,” he mumbled against her mouth. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her even closer, kissing her deeper as their tongues melded together. They could deal with the complicated side of things later, but for now… For now he just wanted to taste her lips on his.

Distantly, Hancock was aware that even more people were staring at them as they made out in the narrow hallway, but if he thought he hadn’t cared before, that was nothing compared to the utter lack of fucks he gave now. He had Nora.

Dipping his face to her neck, he whispered in her ear. “You drive me goddamn crazy, you know that?”

Nora’s lips turned up in the sweetest apologetic smile he’d ever seen. “The feeling’s mutual.” She tipped her face up to kiss him again and pressed her fingers into his shirt. Hancock loved the way her nails dug into his chest, the need in that small gesture. 

“You wanna get out of here?” he asked her huskily. They could go back to her hotel or, even better, she could come to the State House. Sleep in  _ his  _ bed, right beside him.

Nora’s smile turned wicked. “I have a better idea.” She interwove her fingers with his and guided him toward the back of the club. On the stage-side of the room, under the stairs, was a closet of sorts, set apart by a chain-wire fence. It was a stock area for employees, with stacks of boxes of liquor and cocktail peanuts kept safe behind a lock. Nora surreptitiously led Hancock into the dark alcove and pulled out a bobby pin. She knelt before the gate, working the pin in the lock with precision.

“You know I have the keys for that,” Hancock said, amused. “I do own the place…”

With a click, the gate unlocked and swung open. Nora grinned at him cheekily. “Too late.”

Hancock smirked and stumbled into the closet with her. The space was shrouded in shadows and out of sight…  _ kinda _ . The boxes mostly hid them from the lounge area, but the chain-link fence obviously did nothing. It wouldn’t be hard for someone to see in if they tried. 

Which Hancock, admittedly, found very sexy. His hands were already on Nora, undoing her shirt, when the gate softly clicked shut behind him. “You know, I could have you locked up for this,” he growled, kissing her neck as his fingers nimbly undid the buttoned shirt she’d changed into. “Breaking and entering…”

“Yeah, but I think you prefer me here… don’t you?” Nora teased, her hands going for his belt buckle.

Hancock murmured a  _ yes  _ as he pressed his lips to the delicate pulse points on her neck. All the anger he’d felt over their clumsy feelings had channeled into the lust he felt now. The passion. Fuck his past and his reputation. He wanted her,  _ all  _ of her, and none of that other shit mattered. 

Nora undid his pants faster than Hancock could get through her buttons, and he groaned as she slid her hand down the V-shaped muscles of his pelvis to grab his cock. He’d been half-hard before — hell, even when they were fighting, his dick had other ideas — but all it took was the brush of her fingertips down his shaft to send all his blood rushing  _ down _ . 

He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her to him, touching his forehead to hers as she stroked him. “So, the women around here talk, huh?” he asked with husky amusement. “Do I live up to the expectations?”

Nora giggled under her breath. “Mmm, I’d say  _ yes _ , but I think I need to look into it a bit more.”

“Don’t want to jump to conclusions…” Hancock unbuttoned the rest of Nora’s shirt and pulled it down enough to bare her shoulders and chest. She had on a lacy, off-white bra, the delicate fabric frayed in some places. He ran a hand over the textured material, pushing her tits up even higher and giving them a good squeeze. 

Magnolia had returned to the stage with her band and started up a new song, her melodic voice drowning out Nora’s soft moan. They probably  _ should  _ be quiet, Hancock thought. He  _ should  _ want to be discreet — it was the gentlemanly thing to do when fucking in public — but he didn’t care. It turned him on to think of the Goodneighbor citizens seeing him ravish “the vault girl,” as they called Nora. Seeing him lay enough heat on her to counterbalance all their coldness. If Goodneighbor had any doubts about Nora’s importance to him before, it’d all be gone after this.

He kissed her neck, tasting the slight saltiness of her skin, and feeling her pulse beneath his teeth. He bit down lightly, sucking  _ just  _ enough to leave a mottled purple mark.

His blood was still hot from their fight — so what if he was a little more aggressive than usual? Nora seemed to like it.

“Mmm, yeah,” she murmured, grasping the back of his neck as he pinned her against the wall, one arm to either side of her head. The length of his hard cock pressed against her thigh as he ran his fingers along her leg and dragged the hem of her skirt up her thigh. She had on a lacy black thong — between this and the bra, they were probably the only purposefully sexy pieces of clothing Nora owned. Most of her wardrobe consisted of armor and rugged underclothes, built for the road. 

His gaze roved over the delicate black fabric and he couldn’t help picturing himself ripping it off with his teeth. But  _ juuust  _ in case someone decided to barge in on them and they had to make a quit exit… 

He pushed her skirt further up her thighs, but didn’t take it off, then teasingly ran his index finger along the top edge of her lacy thong, making her shiver. He moved his hand lower and pulled the edge of her panties aside. There was something hot about seeing her half-dressed, knowing that she didn’t want to wait until they got back to a room. 

Hancock rubbed her lightly with his fingertips and kissed her harder until they were both breathing heavily, then slipped a finger in between her tight lips. His cock hardened instantly — she was so fucking wet. Too wet to have been turned on in just the past couple minutes. She must’ve been as aroused as he was when they were fighting, a realization that got his blood pumping even more.

Nora’s breath hitched. Her pelvis angled further into Hancock’s palm as he slowly slid his curled finger in and out of her tight opening. 

He braced one leanly muscled arm against the wall as he kissed her, mostly shielding Nora behind his body if anyone were to look. 

She arched her neck up to breathe hot air against his ear, and her hair tickled his cheek as she whispered, “Take me here.”

Hancock let out a low, husky chuckle deep in his chest. “Gladly.” 

He grabbed her ass with both hands and lifted her with one swift motion so her thighs were wrapped around his hips, her back against the wall. Nora gasped and squeezed her arms around his neck tighter. In the shadows, Hancock could see the glint of light on her eyes as she stared at him through her lashes and the flash of her teeth as she smiled. “I’ve never had sex in public before,” she whispered conspiratorially. “Just a little confession I thought I’d share.” 

Hancock smirked, taking a certain amount of pride in expanding her boundaries. “Oh baby, stick with me and I’ll be more firsts for ya. First time in public—” he kissed her neck, “—first time on the road—” his lips moved to her cheek, “—first time all bound up.” He reached up and grabbed her hands in one of his, then pinned them above her head as he held her against the wall and pressed himself harder between her legs, kissing her hungrily.

Nora giggled against his lips. When his kisses paused, she whispered, “Yeah, you sure are a lot of firsts for me. You know, I’ve only— well, I’ve only ever been with my fiance—” Nora winced slightly. “I mean, the guy I was engaged to before all this, Nate. But he, uh, he wasn’t particularly  _ adventurous _ in the bedroom.” She grinned bashfully and looked down. “Missionary under the covers was about as crazy as things got.”

Not that he loved hearing about her past lover, but Hancock  _ had  _ been kinda curious about Nora’s history. He’d never seen her sneak off to hook up with someone during their travels, and she didn’t seem to have a lover waiting for her in any of the settlements. But she’d only ever been with the one guy? And he was boring as shit in the bedroom?

“His loss,” Hancock said with a chuckle. “I can’t imagine being with someone like you and not wanting to do everything to the moon and back.” He didn’t say his other thoughts about Nate aloud, like  _ what an idiot _ , and  _ how the fuck could he not want to ravish her in every way possible?  _ “By the way, if ya ever got a curiosity about something, you lemme know.” He lowered his voice to its most seductive rasp. “I’m always happy to help.”

Nora grinded her hips around him, pressing against his bulge, still tucked behind his fly. “Curiosities… fucking me against a wall, for starters.”

Hancock’s lips took on a devilish tilt. “You got it, baby.” He reached down and freed his quickly hardening cock and pressed it against her warm opening. He loved being able to look right into her eyes, her face only inches from his. To see every shift of her expression. He only hoped she liked looking at him just as much.  _ Doubtful _ , he thought, but the fuck-me look she was giving him told him otherwise. 

Her eyes squeezed shut and her lips parted as he pushed himself into her. “Oh fuck,” she gasped. 

“Oh fuck is right.” His voice came out a growl as he fought back waves of pleasure. She was so tight and hot around him, and when he slowly tilted his hips back and forward again, thrusting into her with one smooth motion, his cock was already throbbing.

Magnolia and the band moved from a slow jazz to the slightly more upbeat “It Don’t Mean a Thing.” Hancock moved his hips to the music, fucking Nora with a steady rhythm that went right to his bones. Nora’s breasts bounced with every thrust, nearly spilling out of her push-up bra, and her nails dug into his shoulders. 

_Rapture,_ Hancock thought. That’s the word he’d use to describe the moment. _Pure rapture._ He bent his head forward to kiss the spot where Nora’s neck met her collarbone. He let his teeth graze her skin and felt her shudder beneath him. 

Her skin was hot against his mouth, feverish. Now this is what he’d been talking about earlier in the night. Finding his groove. His confidence. His  _ Han _ -fucking- _ cock _ ness. He may have had more flaws than he could count, but he could play Nora’s body like the ghoul on stage played the bass. He could make her sing. 

He picked up the pace, pumping into her with more vigor. His arms burned from holding her up and his core was tight, but the ache only heightened his senses. God, he wanted to drink her in, taste and feel her all over. Whatever she wanted the two of them to be, he was hellbent on winning her over. 

With every thrust, his pelvis pressed against Nora’s clit and she let out a little  _ mmm.  _ Her cries of pleasure grew louder as Magnolia and the band played in full swing, the beat of the drum and wail of the sax echoing off the rounded ceiling. “Fuck, I’m getting close, Hancock.”

Hancock kissed her deeply, moving his tongue in a sensuous figure-eight against hers. He gave her lower lip a light bite before whispering, “Come for me, baby. Lemme hear you sing.” 

He squeezed her thighs harder, thrusting against her sweet spot, bringing her closer with every move of his hips. 

“Oh god, Hancock. Oh—!” Nora cried out as her pussy tensed up around him. The music drowned out her voice to the rest of the club, but he could hear it.  _ Oh,  _ could he hear it. Wasn’t a sound on earth he liked better, he decided. 

He kept thrusting, drawing her orgasm out as long as possible as Nora squeezed her eyes shut, lips parted in a sexy O. Finally, the tenseness in her body subsided and she let out a heavy breath. “Wow. Holy shit. I mean—  _ fuck. _ ”

Hancock kissed her slowly and she arched forward into him. She studied his face with dusky bedroom eyes. “I want to finish you with my mouth,” she murmured, wriggling out of his grasp. When her feet hit the ground, she ran her fingernails down Hancock’s shirt and sank onto her knees in front of him.

Hancock stared down at her, transfixed. “Well, damn, if I’m not the luckiest guy in the Commonwealth tonight,” he rasped. 

Nora glanced up at him mischievously before running her tongue over the head of his cock. Hancock groaned as she licked her own sweet wetness off his dick, taking him fully into her mouth. 

He let his upper back fall against the wall, his mind and body drunk with pleasure. Nora was a force to be reckoned with, and coming damn close to bringing Hancock to his knees himself. The way she sucked his cock with just the right amount of pressure, sucking lightly as she stroked his length with her lips and swirled her tongue around his head, threatened to undo him completely. 

She dug her fingers into his thigh through his black jeans with one hand, squeezing his firm, lean muscles.  With her other, she reached up to stroke his shaft while her mouth continued to work his throbbing head relentlessly.

Hancock’s gaze roved down to Nora. She looked up at him, and the sight alone of her locking eyes with him with his cock deep in her mouth, so eager to please him, was enough to push him to the edge. 

If he’d had the presence of mind, he might’ve worried about finishing — did she want him to finish in her mouth? Should he ask? But in the moment, he figured giving her warning and letting her react as she chose would suffice. 

He groaned, “Fuck, Nora, I’m gonna come.”

Nora murmured something around his dick, not pulling back. She continued to work his cock in her mouth until he couldn’t hold back any longer. His core tightened and, with a final stroke of Nora’s tongue, he spilled over, filling her pretty mouth with his hot come. Throughout the waves of pleasure, Nora continued to suck him, until the last drop left his throbbing member. 

Hancock’s thighs shook and he stumbled back against the wall. “Whoa, baby— I’m damn-near seein’ stars. That was good—  _ really  _ good.” 

Nora drew the back of her hand over her mouth and buttoned up her shirt, then gave him a wickedly satisfied smile. “Hmm, next time I’m gonna try to  _ actually  _ bring you to your knees.” 

Pulse slowing, Hancock tucked himself back into his jeans and zipped up. He laughed low under his breath. “As far as goals go, I think that’s one I could get behind.” He shook the wrinkles out of his red overcoat, then slung an arm around Nora’s shoulders. “C’mon. What do you say we sneak outta here before the whole town knows we’ve been up to no good?”

As they left the area under the stairs as subtly as possible, Hancock noticed few eyes seemed to be watching them pointedly, all except one pair. Fahrenheit sat on one of the worn sofas across the lounge with her arm around Magnolia. As she noticed Hancock, she raised her drink in a toast, her mouth stretching into a wide, cheeky grin. Hancock waved her off and quickly maneuvered Nora toward the door before she could notice Fahrenheit’s silent cheering.

The cold night air felt refreshing as they exited the Third Rail into the town square. Refreshing, especially considered how hot they’d gotten downstairs. Maybe both their heads could clear and they could have a more even-keeled conversation.

Hancock was about to suggest going to the State House when a voice called out. 

“Nora—!”

He looked toward the source of the noise. At first, he couldn’t make anything out in the dark— nothing but a pair of glowing yellow-gold eyes. The figure stepped out of the shadows, all smooth grey paneling with a sharp mouth and private-dick getup. 

“Nick?” Nora questioned. “What are you doing here?”

Nick slid his hands into the deep pockets of his trenchcoat. “Got a message from Dr. Amari. She said she —  _ you _ — might need my help in cracking Kellogg’s memories.”

Hancock thought back to the coil they’d retrieved the previous night — he’d almost forgotten it with everything else that had happened. With Nick here, it seemed they had all the pieces. 

His stomach churned as he wondered what they might learn from the dead man’s brain. 

Nick’s mechanical irises dilated as he looked from Nora to Hancock. “In any case, we don’t have to do this now. I know you folks gotta sleep, so we can pick this up in the morning—”

“No,” Nora interjected, an eager spark in her eye. “There’s no time like the present.” She started walking toward the Memory Den with Nick when she craned her neck around. “Hancock, you coming?”

Hancock’s longing gaze drifted from the State House, where his bed waited for the two of them, to the Den. “Right behind ya,” he called.

After Nora and Nick’s backs were turned, he pulled his stash of Mentats from his pocket and popped two of the chalky pills in his mouth, swallowing them dry. He’d been right about needing the chems later, just not for the reason he expected. Life was unpredictable that way. 

The rush hit him like lightning crackling across his brain, snapping him awake. Slipping a third pill under his tongue for good measure, he strode toward the Memory Den and whatever the world had in store for them next.

When you were the Mayor of Goodneighbor and the Vault Dweller, a normal night together would just have to wait. 


	3. Wonderful You Came By

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hancock and Nora stop at Hubris Comics on their way to the Cambridge Police Station and get a little *too* in character when Nora tries on the Silver Shroud costume.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A mostly canon world except Nate was Nora's fiance, not husband, and they didn't have a child. Her father was shot in the vault and her younger brother, Shaun, taken by the Institute.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Nora’s eyelids twitched as she lay in the memory lounger, as though her gaze were darting back and forth, seeing something through closed eyes that wasn’t there. In the lounger adjacent to hers, Nick lay still as a statue. If Hancock didn’t know any better, he’d think the synth had been shut off. Was that a thing that could happen?

Hancock crossed his arms and paced across the basement lab for the hundredth time. The stuffy air smelled like burnt wiring and antiseptics, and the fluorescent lights made the space behind his eyes ache. He couldn’t wait for the science experiment to end. “Is it supposed to take this long, Doc?”

Only a hint of concern showed through Dr. Amari’s professional demeanor. “I can’t say for sure. I’ve never tried this before. But I suspect it should be over soon.” She checked her console beside the loungers. “They’ve reached the last memory I was able to recover.”

Hancock grumbled an _all right, yeah._ The doctor had told him it might take a while, and that he should go get some sleep. He’d scoffed at the suggestion. As if he’d leave Nora to have her brain tampered with, not knowing if or when she’d wake up… No, when. It was definitely _when_ , and he would be there when she did.

After a couple more minutes ticked by like hours, Nora’s eyelids stirred and then fluttered open. She sucked in a sharp breath and shot up in the lounger, arms feeling out blindly in front of her.

Hancock was at her side in a flash. “Whoa, steady there.” He put a hand on the tense muscles of her shoulder. “You’re okay.”

Dr. Amari crouched at Nora’s side and shined a penlight into one eye after the other.

“Ugh, where—?” Nora pressed a hand to her forehead and blinked a few times.

Hancock heard the soft whir of servos, then Nick sat up as well. His orange eyes flickered a few times. “Well, that was a hell of a trip,” he said dryly. “How’d Nora make out?”

“Nora, how are you feeling?” Dr. Amari spoke in slow, over-enunciated syllables.

“Teleportation,” Nora muttered. “Teleport...”

Hancock stared at her with fear in his eyes. God, she’d come back with her mind all jumbled. His heart raced. He wasn’t one to hurt the innocent, obviously, but if Dr. Amari had fucked up Nora’s brain, he swore he was gonna—

“Teleportation. It’s how the Institute gets around,” Nora said more clearly. She met Hancock’s gaze and frowned. “I’m fine. Relax.”

Hancock’s adrenaline waned. He extended a hand and helped Nora out of the lounger. “You had me nervous there for a second,” he said. “So, teleportation, huh? Makes sense they’d use some fancy solution when, you know, a _door_ would work just fine.”

Dr. Amari brought a finger to her lips, brows raised. “No, it’s genius. No one has found the entrance to the Institute because there _is_ no entrance.” Her expression grew sympathetic as she turned to Nora. “Your memories of Vault 111… I’m so sorry we put you through that again. But the data we’ve gained is incredible.”

Nora shook her head and rubbed her temples. “No, it’s fine. If we got what we were looking for, it was worth it…”

Hancock suddenly felt like he’d stumbled into a Goodneighbor town hall meeting that he didn’t call. “What, uh, happened in Vault 111?”

Pain crossed Nora’s lovely face. “It’s where they— the Institute, it seems — killed my father and kidnapped my younger brother… I unfroze just long enough to see it happen.”

“Shit… sorry,” Hancock murmured. He knew, of course, that the Institute had kidnapped her brother, but not that her father had been shot, or that she’d been there when he was. His heart ached for her. Seemed like they both had things in their pasts they hadn’t felt like sharing. “At least we have a shot at getting your brother back, yeah?”

Nora bit her lip and nodded. “Right, though it seems like we have a ways to go. But — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — it seems like Shaun is safe with the Institute, for now.”

“Well, that’s about the best case scenario we can ask for,” Nick said. “Gives us time to be strategic about this instead of doing anything rash.”

Hancock stole furtive glances at Nora as she, Nick, and Dr. Amari talked next steps — finding some rogue Institute scientist named Virgil in the Glowing Sea. Now that he’d come down from their Third Rail affair, he felt confused once more, but not nearly as grim. He could truthfully swear to Nora that she wasn’t just a notch on his belt, but what _was_ she to him?

His reputation, he was ashamed to admit, wasn’t wrong. Even when he was human, Hancock couldn’t stand feeling trapped, or worse, like he was letting down the ones he cared for. He always justified leaving by telling himself that disappointment by either party was an inevitability, so why waste their time? Better to leave before anyone got too attached. Still, he knew it was shitty.

With Nora, he had the same fear of disappointing her, but he didn’t feel trapped. Quite the opposite. It was like he was chasing her and she was always one step out of reach, even when she was in his arms. He _wanted_ her to want him. Perhaps this thing with her was the hill he wanted to die on. The one time he’d take a chance.

Hancock had been vaguely aware of Nick saying something about needing to cool his circuits and leaving to get fresh air, but it was something Nora said that snapped his attention back to the room.

“—the Brotherhood of Steel should have a suit of power armor I can borrow.”

“What’s that now?” he stammered, looking from Nora to Dr. Amani.

“Well, the Glowing Sea should be no problem for you, of course, but Nora’s going to need some extra protection against the radiation,” the doctor explained.

Nora shrugged. “No better way than with a power suit. I think Danse will lend me one.”

“Can’t we just load you up with Rad-X?” Hancock grumbled, but he knew his argument didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Nora shot his suggestion down with a look. “We should head toward the Cambridge Police Station. It’d be a lot safer to make the trip in the dark. Are you too tired to travel tonight?”

Hancock sighed. “Nothing a few Mentats can’t fix.”

When they left the stuffy lab and went upstairs to the Memory Den’s first floor, Hancock could tell something was _off_ about Nick as soon as he saw the synth. Nick sat on a couch by the entrance with a strange blank stare on his already-inexpressive face.

As Nora approached, Nick looked up at her and spoke in a voice not his own — one that sounded gravelly and rough and bitter. “Hope you got what you were looking for inside my head. Heh. I was right. I should’ve killed you when you were on ice.”

Horror washed over Nora’s face and she dropped her hand to the pistol on her hip. “Kellogg? Is that you?”

Nick’s face shifted and he spoke in his normal tone again. “What? What are you talking about?”

Nora’s mouth sank into a frown. “You… feeling alright, Nick?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?” The synth still sounded like himself, if a bit annoyed.

“You sounded like Kellogg just then…”

A chill ran through Hancock. He was all for the rights of sentient beings, synths or no, but this was some freaky shit, the kind of shit that just didn’t happen with people.

“Did I?” Nick’s brow markings rose. “Amari said there might be some ‘mnemonic impressions’ left over…”

Hancock didn’t know what the hell that meant, but as far as he was concerned, Nick didn’t seem nearly as alarmed as he ought to, so he fully agreed when Nora said, “Maybe you better stay behind on this one, Nick.”

The synth reluctantly nodded his head. “Yeah. Yeah, all right. But you let me know if you need my help again. Take care of yourselves out there.”

Hancock shared a wary glance with Nora as they left the building. Not even out of Goodneighbor yet, and this trip was already off to a strange start, even for them.

***

“Hey, isn’t that the place your buddy Kent asked us to go?” Nora whispered, pointing to a tall brick building.

They’d been walking for about an hour, down past Boston Commons and toward the library. In the faint light the moon cast over the street, Hancock read the faded lettering above the front door where Nora pointed. “Hubris Comics. Yeah, that’s the one. You know, somewhere I have an old collection of Grognaks from when I was a kid. Still missing issue three though…”

Those days, when he and his brother would spend hours lying on the roof of their Diamond City house, comics spread out under the sun, felt like a lifetime ago. They may as well have been.

Nora nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “I was just thinking, Danse isn’t going to be awake at the precinct yet anyway. Want to pop in here and grab that costume Kent was going on about?”

Hancock considered the idea. They could use the caps for supplies. _Especially_ if they were going into the nightmarish wasteland that was the Glowing Sea. He’d already contributed what funds he could, but he hadn’t had many caps lying around when he met Nora. Most of his money went to one of two places: right back into Goodneighbor, either shoring up the town’s defenses or helping drifters get back on their feet, or towards fueling his raging drug habit. “Yeah, quick grab and dash,” he agreed. “Let’s do it.”

Hancock entered first, shotgun raised. The unlocked front door swung open on creaky hinges, and as soon as he crossed the threshhold, the powerful scent of old paper and dust hit his senses. He turned on his barrel-mounted flashlight, surveying the room one circle of light at a time. Rows of comic-book racks lined the shop floor, though most of their contents had fallen to the floor in the form of charred scraps of pages. Still, a few books seemed intact — those would be worth a few caps.

The door swung shut behind Nora. She put a hand on Hancock’s shoulder, whispering into his ear. “Kent said the studio is on the top floor. That’s where we should find the costume.”

“Mhmm,” Hancock murmured, scanning the room for the stairs. He missed the pressure of her hand on his shoulder as soon as she lifted it away, absently wishing he’d said something to make the moment last.

 _Get a grip_ , he told himself. They had slept together, yet here he was craving the lightest, most innocuous touch from her. The feeling reminded him of the few times his chem habit had crossed the line to full-blown addiction, when thoughts of his next hit of Jet, no matter how small, consumed his mind.

A creak and groan coming from somewhere above them stole his attention and he raised his shotgun toward a huge hole in the ceiling. In the flashlight’s harsh beam, a pair of beady eyes in a sunken face stared back at him.

“Shit, ferals!” he snapped.

The creature let out a shriek as shrill as tearing metal and fell unceremoniously to the ground floor. If it felt any pain as it thudded against the hardwood, it ignored it, scrabbling back to its feet and lunging toward Nora.

Before the ghoul could touch her, Hancock lined up the sights of his shotgun and pulled the trigger. The explosion of gunpowder and lead threw the feral back. It crashed into one of the comic racks, leaving stringy bits of viscera on the metal edges before its body slumped to the floor, head lolling. A chorus of rasps and growls rang out as more faces appeared in the ceiling hole.

“Shit, that one had friends,” Nora shouted. Hancock hastily reloaded his shotgun, heart pounding, as three more ferals rained into the room.

Raiders, gunners, and super mutants were all arguably more dangerous, but ferals, _ferals_ were the one thing that scared the everloving shit out of Hancock. Not a run-away-screaming kind of scared, but a wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat fear. From time to time, he saw their hollow eyes in his dreams, waking up just before they could tear into him. It was something about their ferocity, the way they tirelessly pursued their prey, that unsettled him so deeply.

You could reason with a human opponent, or at least intimidate them until they went away — they had survival instincts. Ferals didn’t. They’d run straight into the barrel of your gun if it meant they might be able to take a bite out of you first.

Nora took out the first two that fell from the ceiling, aiming her .44 with focused precision. The first gurgled on the floor, bleeding out with a bullet in the chest and two to the legs. The second, she hit with a headshot, leaving a smoking hole oozing black blood in the center of the feral’s forehead. As Nora reloaded, Hancock shot at the third. The shell shrapnel missed the ghoul’s torso, instead piercing half a dozen holes in the creature’s right arm. It howled and swiped at Hancock with its left hand. The clawlike nails snagged the sleeve of his coat, but Hancock sidestepped the full force of its charge and smashed the butt of his shotgun into the feral’s skull. The pitiful creature crumpled at his feet without another sound.

“Good shooting,” he said to Nora as they stood back to back, eyes peeled for more ghouls. She’d told Hancock she was a ‘lawyer’ in her old life. He didn’t think that was a combat profession, although she had mentioned ‘legal battles’ once or twice. In any case, she’d learned how to handle a gun better than most.

“You too,” Nora replied, breathing a little harder than usual. “Nothing wakes you up like a feral attack, huh?”

“Yeah, poor bastards are awfully feisty.” Truthfully, Hancock hated having to kill ferals — not that the mindless creatures gave him a choice. They hit just a _bit_ too close to home. He hoped Nora didn’t see even a hint of him in the feral ghouls when she looked into their faces — right before she pulled the trigger.

But no, she couldn’t possibly—  ferals didn’t look anything like regular ghouls like him.

The ferals had emaciated bodies, with loose skin and long, jagged fingernails, backs hunched from atrophied muscles, and blackened gums, usually with bits of old meat between the teeth. Their mad, beady eyes resembled those of old comic-book zombies, and they acted with a ferocity to match — unthinking, unfeeling as they attacked anything in their path.

He spouted a morbid joke on the subject every now and then, but deep down, it terrified him that he could hypothetically turn into one of them. He’d never seen it happen firsthand, but he’d heard stories, even as close as Diamond City. Thinking, feeling ghouls losing their minds and snapping on their neighbors. It was enough to make him question every violent impulse or slightly insaner-than-usual scheme he had, always watching for the beginnings of madness.

No one understood exactly how ghoulism worked, or whether going feral was the eventual fate of all ghouls — there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the process, making ghouls a frightening mystery, even to themselves. As far as most people could tell, there were humans and there were ferals, with ghouls like Hancock somewhere in between.

Nora stopped in front of a creepy, stuffed monkey toy on a shelf and brushed her fingertips over something on the counter. “Unstoppables issue four,” she said softly. “This was one of my little brother’s favorites.”

“How, uh, old was he when he got kidnapped?” Hancock asked. He wasn’t around kids much and didn’t really know what to ask about them beyond the basics.

“He was eight when the bombs went off.”

Hancock did some quick math. Nora was, what? In her early twenties? “That’s a big age gap between you two, no?”

Nora sighed deeply and looked away from the comic book. “Yeah, twelve years. My dad and stepmom had Shaun after they got married.” Her gaze fell to the floor and she laughed under her breath. “He was scared to go into the ‘decontamination’ chamber in the Vault, so they let him crawl in next to our dad. Little did we know they were actually cryo pods.” She wiped the back of her hand over her eyes like she didn’t want Hancock to see they were getting watery, but he noticed. “He’s the only family I have left in this miserable world.”

Hancock’s grip on his shotgun tightened. “We’ll may ‘em pay for what they did to your family, Nora. You got my word.”

Nora gave Hancock a sad smile. “Thank you.” She leaned in and kissed his cheek, the warmth from her lips seeming to spread through his entire body.

He cleared his throat, suddenly feeling embarrassed. “Well hey, thank me when we get him back… Till then, let’s at least rescue this costume.”

He crept up the stairs with Nora right behind him. They dispatched four more ghouls on the second floor, but the creatures were weak, surviving on almost nothing in the abandoned building.

The third floor, they fortunately found empty. “So this is where the magic happened,” Nora noted, holstering her pistol. “Shame the show never aired.”

The room had high ceilings and a big, open set piece, in front of which stood several mannequins. There were lockers, some still open with the remains of paper sack lunches and overcoats belonging to the crew that once worked there. Thick layers of dust lay over the busted stage lights — something, perhaps radroaches, had chewed through the cords.

Hancock strode to the center of the set. “And here we have it, the Silver Shroud, in the cloth.” He removed the long, grey trenchcoat and fedora from the mannequin and held them out to Nora. “I think these belong to you.”

Nora took the clothes, grinning. “So, I get to be the Shroud?”

Hancock gave her an overly incredulous look. “What, you thought it’d be me? Lest you forget, I’m already pretending to be someone I’m not.” He gestured to his tricorn hat and long red Revolutionary jacket.

“All right, all right, fair point—” Nora slipped her arms into the jacket and perched the fedora atop her head. “There.” She furrowed her brow and shot him a brooding stare, lowering her voice to a comical growl. “What do you think? Will the evildoers of the Commonwealth cower from the Shroud once more?”

“I think you make that look good.” Hancock crossed his arms as he gave Nora a roving once over. The sleek coat skimmed her curves in all the right ways. “Not to mention, I’m glad I won’t be the only crazy person running around the Commonwealth in a costume anymore.”

“Yeah, I think you’ve finally met your match,” Nora teased.

“Never expected to, but it’s nice to be wrong.” Hancock met her gaze.

Her blue eyes smoldered under the brim of the Shroud’s fedora, and the edges of her lips curved up at him. “Maybe you should test me,” she suggested hesitantly. “You know, let me practice the act a bit.” She bit her lip suggestively.

 _Oh._ “Practice the act, hmm?” Hancock repeated, stepping closer to her. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. His pants tightened as he felt her breasts press against his chest through her coat. He brushed his hand against her cheek, then lightly ran a fingertip from behind Nora’s ear, down her neck, leaving a line of goosebumps in its wake. “And how far do you want this act to go?”

Nora smiled mischievously. “If I want you to stop, I’ll say ‘Goodneighbor.’ Otherwise, I want you to act like a villain worthy of the Shroud.”

“Goodneighbor,” Hancock murmured, moving in to kiss the sensitive spot beneath her chin. “That’s as good a safe word as I’ve ever heard…” He dropped his voice to a threatening growl. “It looks like I’ve got you in my grasp, Shroud. There’s no escaping this time, not until I’ve taken what I want from you.” He nipped at Nora’s ear, making her giggle. “Now, tell me where the mayor hid the weapons cache.”

“No,” Nora said dramatically. “I’ll never tell you where it is, you— you dastardly devil! Not when you’ll use it to hurt the people of this city.”

Hancock chuckled under his breath and tightened his grip on Nora’s waist. He loved that she had such an _active_ imagination.

With a swipe of his free arm, he cleared the junk off the desk next to them and pushed Nora onto it. He stood imposingly in front of her. “I have ways of making you talk, Shroud…” He leaned forward and ran his hands from her knees to her inner thighs, squeezing firmly, his face inches from hers.

Nora turned her head away from him. “There’s nothing you can do that will make me talk. I swear it!”

Hancock laughed darkly. “We’ll see about that.” Grabbing Nora by the hips, he spun her around and tipped her backward so she was lying lengthwise on the desk, her legs hanging over the edge. Nora gasped as he grabbed her knees and pulled them apart, stepping between her thighs. He threw open the front of her trenchcoat and slowly pulled the hem of her shirt up and over her breasts, running his hand over her smooth torso. Before they’d left Goodneighbor, she’d changed out of her skirt into a sleeveless tank and cargo pants, the fly of which Hancock deftly undid with his other hand.

Her skin felt warm to the touch as he pulled her bra up alongside her shirt. Her breasts fell free from its constriction with a satisfying bounce and he squeezed one firmly. Nora let out a soft _mmm_ and wriggled between his legs, sending a rush of blood straight to his dick. _Mmm, indeed_. The anticipation drove him crazy.

He ran his fingers over the outline of his cock, making sure Nora could see its hard length straining through his pants. “I _will_ make you talk,” he threatened. “By any means necessary.”

Nora’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t—!”

“I would.”

She wriggled harder. Every move of her body against Hancock’s pelvis worked him up even more, until his cock pressed against his pants so hard it ached. He paused to look around him. They were on a film set, surely there had to be some fun props somewhere—

He spotted a glint of metal and his gaze landed on a box sitting on the floor nearby. He reached down and pulled something from its contents. _Perfect._

Hancock held up a pair of handcuffs for Nora to see, making her eyebrows rise. Her breathing sped up a little, making her bared breasts rise and fall. “You’d tie me up?”

“That, and more.” He leaned over her, resting his elbows against the desk as he gave her a deep kiss. Her tongue moved against his in slow, sensuous circles — so exquisitely good.

He intertwined his fingers with hers and raised her hands over her head, then whispered in her ear, dropping the bravado. “Do you trust me?”

A heartbeat passed before Nora whispered back, meeting his eyes. “Always.”

Hancock’s mouth turned up in a devilish smirk as he clicked the cuff around her left wrist, then wrapped the chain around the lamp bolted to the desk before clicking the second cuff around her other hand. He dropped his gaze to the shotgun propped up beside him. Good to keep it within reach at all times, just in case something sprang in on them.

“You bastard!” Nora cried, adopting her stage voice once more. “You won’t get away with this!” She tugged at the cuffs trapping her arms over her head and her breasts jiggled from the movement. Hancock couldn’t resist cupping them in his hands and running his thumbs over their sensitive peaks, making her writhe even harder, her back arching against the desk.

“That’s right, Shroud. You’re not going anywhere.” Hancock bent forward to trace a line of kisses over Nora’s ribs, down past her navel, and over her hip bone. He curled his fingers over the hem of her pants and drew them down, leaving more slow kisses over her hip and down the side of her thigh. She wasn’t wearing panties, he was pleased to find.

He tugged her pants down until they were bunched around the top of her boots, leaving her fully exposed from her ankles to her collarbone. Hancock took a moment to appreciate the sight of her stretched out in front of him. She was so damn sexy.

Taking the improvisation a bit further, Hancock grabbed a coil of stage rope, then whipped his knife from his belt and cut two long stretches. He hastily tied each of her ankles around a leg of the desk, leaving her spread wide open and fully bound.

“ _Now_ I have you where I want you,” he murmured, admiring his handiwork.

His hands dropped to his belt and he began to slip the strap from the buckle, drawing out the action as long as possible. “I’ll give you one last chance, Shroud. Tell me where it is.”

Nora squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “Never!”

_...Zip._

Hancock undid his fly, making sure his package was well within Nora’s line of sight. He took it in his hand, stroking the hard length with a groan. With the way Nora watched him hungrily, he actually enjoyed putting on a show for her, and it didn’t take long for his cock to be rock hard and throbbing. “Are you _certain_ you won’t give up your secret?”

Nora blushed, clearly trying to keep a distraught look on her face, but her lips crept into an excited smile. “Yes.”

“Then you leave me no choice but to do things the hard way…” Hancock reached between Nora’s legs and stroked her pussy, finding her nice and wet. She moaned softly as he slid two fingers into her tight opening, then pressed against her G-spot. His _want_ for her was so strong it was almost maddening, but Hancock held himself back. There was no reason to rush the ‘interrogation’ and every reason to draw it out.

He lowered himself into a crouch and kissed Nora’s inner thigh as he worked his fingers with steady pressure.

Nora shuddered as his warm breath blew over her clit. Then, so lightly as to barely touch her, he licked his tongue over her lips and tickled it back and forth over her most sensitive spot. Nora tightened a little around his fingers. “Oh fuck, that feels good…” she gasped.

“Mmm, I can tell…” Hancock licked her with more pressure, rubbing his fingers more firmly against her G-spot at the same time. She was so slick that, even though she was tight, her body gave almost no resistance against his fingers, wanting to be fucked.

And Hancock would gladly oblige.

He rhythmically stroked the tip of his tongue back and forth over Nora’s clit, sucking lightly until she shook under his touch. From her moans and her shivering and the way her pussy grew tighter and tighter around his fingers, he could tell she was getting close.

“Oh— oh, fuck yes—” Nora gasped. Her hips bucked. “I’m right on the edge—”

…Hancock stopped.

Breathing hard, Nora stared up at him with wide, lustful eyes as he grinned wickedly and stood.

Nora narrowed her eyes. “Oh, you son-of-a—”

“Here’s the deal, _Shroud,_ ” Hancock rasped. “You don’t get to come until you’ve told me what I want to know.”

“Evil…” Nora hissed, pulling against her restraints.

Hancock’s gaze rolled down to between her legs. Her pussy was glisteningly slick and flush with arousal, her clit hard and begging to be touched.

He took his cock in his hand and pressed the head against her lips. “When I’m done with you, you’re going to beg me to let you come,” he growled, pushing into her. Nora moaned as he filled her completely and her head rolled against the desk.

He began to thrust, slow enough to make Nora feel every ridge of his hard length slide against her sensitive inner walls. With how few perks there were to being a ghoul, he was going to use every one he had to maximum advantage — starting with his textured cock. He sped up, pumping into her with more force.

“Yes, fuck, please don’t stop—” Nora cried. _Hmm, that was a start._ Hancock placed his hands on her knees and spread her legs wider, thrusting into her as deeply as he could go. He could tell the head of his cock was pressing up against her G-spot because he felt a gush of wetness deep within her and she tightened around him. The added slickness and firmer grip felt mind-numbingly good. Hancock closed his eyes as they rolled back in his head but didn’t slow the steady drive of his hips.

He reached up to tease one of Nora’s nipples between his fingers. That seemed to drive her wild second only to directly stimulating her clit — which he wasn’t going to do again just yet. He’d wait until the moment he wanted her to come before he gave her aching clit any attention.

Nora’s brow creased. “Ugh, that feels so good— but—” she shuddered and gave a sexy whimper, “—Fuck, I need to come. Please. I can’t take it anymore— it almost — hurts.”

Hancock fucked her harder. “Good. Tell me what I want to know.”

“What—?” For a second, Nora looked at him through half-lidded eyes, apparently in such a state of ecstasy she forgot their roleplay. “Oh, shit— uh no? Mmm—” She cringed as Hancock thrust all the way into her and grinded his hips against her pelvis.

Her muscles were visibly tight, her whole body tense, and she was breathing so hard she was nearly panting.

Hancock lightly brushed his thumb over her clit— only once. Nora’s body jerked and she cried out, writhing from the delicious torture. “Tell me.”

“No—” she gasped. Her jaw tensed as Hancock touched her clit again. “Let me come. Please, I need to—”

“What’s that?” Hancock pumped into her harder again. He, too, was close to coming.

“Please— I need to come—” Nora gasped. She bit her lip as her breasts jolted with every powerful thrust as he fucked her into the desk. “Please, I’ll tell you whatever you want!”

“I knew you would,” Hancock said with a growl. “Fuck, I’m gonna fill that tight pussy with my come to remind you who’s the boss—”

Nora moaned wildly as he rubbed her clit with his thumb and within seconds, she spasmed around his cock, more forcefully than she had during their previous encounters. Her face twisted in what almost looked like pain, but she cried out with pleasure. Hearing her unravel pushed Hancock over the edge. With a final hard thrust, he released into her, pumping his hot come as deep into her pussy as it would go.

After a second to let the vertigo pass, Hancock sucked in a satisfied breath. “Mmm, damn that was good.” He leaned forward to kiss Nora. She lay there, breathing hard, her skin hot to the touch. Every ounce of tension seemed to have drained from her body.

“Hancock, that was—” she laughed under her breath. “ _Intense._ ”

“Yeah, it was.” He released her cuffs, then untied the rope around her ankles, then took her hand and pulled her into a sitting position. He pushed her hair away from her face and gave her a deep, romantic kiss before flashing her a teasing smirk. “But you know, you didn’t hold up to interrogation very well.”

Nora laughed. “You’ll just have to help me practice more, I guess...”

As Hancock watched her get dressed, the old feeling of unease in his gut crept back. Every time they were together felt like an open-ended question that he didn’t know how to answer. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he knew the question. And he definitely didn’t know what to say to make this feeling stop.

Nora sighed and straightened the Shroud’s fedora on her head. “Suppose we should get back on the road, huh?”

“Yep, wanna be there when Captain Tin Can wakes up in the morning, right?” Hancock slung his shotgun over his shoulder and headed for the door.

“Hey, you don’t have to trust Danse.” Nora descended the stairs at his side, tying the sash of her trench coat as she walked. “You just need to, you know, keep from saying anything so sarcastic he kills you.”

Hancock pictured the Brotherhood Paladin with his usual smug look of self righteousness plastered over his, admittedly, handsome face. “No promises,” he grumbled.

No matter how hard he tried to be okay with — or at least neutral to — the Brotherhood’s presence, every encounter with them was a nuclear-level effort in self-control. _And brother, this plant is headed for a meltdown_ , he said to himself.

Counting the shotgun shells in his ammo pouch, Hancock realized he was running low. “Hey, I’m gonna check around real quick, see if any poor bastards left some ammo behind.”

He spotted a closet in the back of the first-floor room they hadn’t checked before. Maybe he’d even find that one issue of Grognak he never had as a kid—

With his mind elsewhere as he opened the door, he didn’t immediately register the feral ghoul that sprang from the darkness.

“Oh shit—!” Hancock shouted, swinging his shotgun to face the vicious creature as it lunged past him.

The deafening gunshot drowned out Nora’s scream as he pulled the trigger.

It all happened so fast. _Too_ fast. The shell unloaded point-blank into the ghoul’s chest, but not before, Hancock noticed with a sickening rush of horror, it could slice its jagged nails through Nora’s shoulder.

“Nora!” Hancock screamed. The feral collapsed onto the ground at the same time Nora staggered forward and fell into his arms. He clutched her, mind racing. No— what the fuck had just happened?

“Hancock—”

His name passed Nora’s lips in a pained whisper, then she said no more as her blood began to flow over his hands.


	4. Minding My Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hancock and Nora pay a visit to the Prydwen, where Hancock catches a glimpse of the Brotherhood's true colors. 
> 
> *No sexytimes in this chapter, folks*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A mostly canon world except Nate was Nora's fiance, not husband, and they didn't have a child. Her father was shot in the vault and her younger brother, Shaun, taken by the Institute.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Hancock had seen a lot of blood over the years. A  _ lot  _ of blood. But no blood was as shocking or precious to him as Nora’s. Nora, whose blood was currently spilling over his dirty hands and onto the floorboards, disappearing in between the cracks in the wood. 

“Hang on, Nora,” he said shakily, lowering her weakened body to the ground. “I’m gonna patch you up. You— you ain’t going anywhere, hear me?” 

Nora murmured a weak response as Hancock swiftly undid the flag sash from around his hips and tied it in a tourniquet over her shoulder. At least the pressure should slow the bleeding, it should— 

_ Fuck, focus.  _ He yanked a stimpak from his jacket’s inner pocket, then tore off the cap with his teeth. The syringe’s sharp, hollow-tipped needle glinted in the light of Nora’s Pipboy for only a second before Hancock plunged it into her shoulder, just beside her wound. With numb fingers, he tossed the used syringe to the ground and reached into his pocket again to retrieve a dose of Med-X.

“Shit. Shit!” he spat, frantically feeling through his stash and finding nothing. He was acting on pure instinct now, his rational thoughts long gone. Only one burned through the panic: save Nora.

He’d seen Nora injured plenty of times in the field, but he’d never seen her lose this much blood. The damn feral must’ve nicked an artery or something. He stole a hateful glance at the creature’s shotgun-mangled body lying nearby.  _ Monster _ , he thought.

“My bag. Check my bag…” Nora groaned. 

Hancock rifled through her worn messenger bag. Sure enough, there was a single syringe of Med-X. He stuck her with this needle, too, making a pincushion of her slender arm, and her eyes glazed over as the chems began to take effect.

“Ahhh…” she groaned through gritted teeth. “That helps— with the— pain.”

With no other tools at his disposal, Hancock could do nothing more but wait. He held a hand to her clammy forehead. Wait, and watch. Blood hadn’t soaked the sash around her wound, so it seemed the stimpak had, at least, slowed the bleeding. 

“Ouch…” Nora slurred after a minute. Slowly, she sat up, turning her weary gaze to her shoulder. “That bastard got me good, huh?”

Hancock let out a held breath. Well, she wasn’t unconscious. That was a lot better than the alternative.

“We gotta get you to a doctor,” he muttered, grabbing her arm and helping her to her feet. She needed proper treatment before an infection set in, a fate not nearly as daunting as a run-in with raiders, but potentially just as deadly.

“Whoa,” Nora sputtered, stumbling over her feet. “Vertigo…”

Hancock slung her good arm over his shoulder to take most of her weight, but she was borderline ragdoll. They wouldn’t make it far. His mind raced. “We gotta get back to Goodneighbor. Yeah. It’s the closest settlement with a doctor. If we can just—”

“No chance…” Nora looked on the verge of passing out: eyelids heavy, skin pale, mouth drawn into a tight line. 

“I’m damn well not going to leave you here to die, so we gotta make it somewhere,” Hancock rasped, suddenly angry. Not at Nora, but at himself for not being as cautious as he knew he should, and at the feral for being a mindless beast, similar enough to a regular ghoul for him to feel a sense of shared shame. 

“ _ Ughh _ .” Nora gave a pained groan as she twisted to point at something behind her. “Grab my bag and help me get outside.”

Hancock hooked his foot through the bag’s strap and dragged it to him, awkwardly dipping at the knees to grab it with his free hand. With Nora over his shoulder, he nearly lost his balance. 

“Outside,” Nora repeated. “Please.” 

Hancock shuffled her toward the comic shop’s entrance. “Look, I don’t want to argue with you in this condition, but we’re going to be sitting ducks out there. Maybe I could run back to Goodneighbor and bring the doctor to you—”

“Won’t need to.” Nora winced as Hancock accidentally jostled her. “I got something for emergencies— check the outer pouch on my bag.”

“Okay…” Hancock said skeptically, gently lowering her to the ground once they were outside. What she could possibly have that would help them now, he didn’t know, but he was curious to find out. He dug through her bag again. What he found only made him more concerned. “These are grenades.”

“Yeah.” Nora’s eyelids fluttered. “Take one out.”

Well, this proved it — she’d lost too much blood from her head. Hancock scrunched up his face. “Are you mad? Might as well put up a flashing neon sign letting every raider in the area know we’re here.” 

“Trust me.” Nora sat slumped over with her arms on her knees, head hanging woozily. “Toss it.” 

“Fine,” Hancock muttered under his breath, praying he wasn’t making a mistake as he pulled the pin. “Here goes.” 

He chucked it into the dusty street. A second later, the grenade made a loud pop. A plume of thick red smoke poured from its end and rose into the sky. Not quite what he’d expected...

His palms sweated as he waited for— something. “What are we looking for, Nora?” A beat passed and he looked at her. “Nora?”

Her back had slumped against the wall, body limp and unresponsive. 

“Shit.” Hancock crouched beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pressing rough fingertips to her jugular. She still had a steady pulse, but her skin felt cold to the touch.

Then he noticed something, a low  _ chop-chop-chop  _ noise in the distance. His gaze lifted toward the clouds. He waited, and then there they were, Nora’s emergency responders. Hancock felt relieved that she’d get the help she needed, but goddamn, if they weren’t the last people he wanted to see: the Brotherhood of Steel.

The drab olive-green vertibird hovered for a moment, whipping the coattails of Hancock’s jacket with the considerable force of its rotors, before setting down in the street with a heavy thud. 

Two Brotherhood knights in full power armor leapt from the passenger bay, immediately setting the sights of their automatic rifles on Hancock. 

“Get away from the woman, freak,” one of them shouted in a fierce, modulated voice. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, cool down, Tin Can.” Hancock raised his hands. “I ain’t the one you’re here for. My gal— uh, my friend, Nora, is hurt bad.” He tried to hide the resentment from his voice. “For some reason, she thought  _ you _ were the ones to call.”

A third Brotherhood soldier clanked from the vertibird, then removed his helmet with a decompressing  _ hiss.  _ Hancock frowned. “Great…”

Annoyingly symmetrical face. Butt chin. A hood that fit his head like a condom. Yeah, this soldier was none other than Paladin “Tight-Ass” Danse. 

“Stand down,” Danse ordered his fellow soldiers. “I know this— ghoul.” 

Danse’s pause, as though he had to wrack his brain for the non-slur word for Hancock’s kind, didn’t escape the ghoul’s notice. 

Hesitantly, the soldiers lowered their weapons. “You know this, this  _ thing,  _ sir?”

“Unfortunately,” Hancock grumbled before Danse could respond, dropping his hands to his sides. “Look, we gonna stand around and chat all day, or are you going to help Nora?”

Danse strode over to Nora, each weighty step of his power armor sending a faint tremor through the earth. “This is one of our newest recruits. The ghoul is her associate.” 

_ The ghoul.  _ The asshole didn’t even have the decency to address him directly. Hancock bit his tongue and took one of Nora’s arms. “Just help me get her into the chopper.”

Danse effortlessly pushed Hancock aside and scooped Nora up in his steel-clad arms. “I’ve got her.” Without another word, he strode back to the vertibird and climbed inside. The other two soldiers boarded as well, but before they could take off without him, Hancock ran over and hurtled in.

“Oh no, I’m coming with you.” Hancock grabbed ahold of one of the anchor grips, securing himself in the passenger bay in case one of them tried to throw him out. “I don’t trust you types as far as I can throw ya.” 

Danse scoffed and raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Fine, come along. But don’t expect a warm welcome.” 

_ A warm welcome, no _ , Hancock thought as the vertibird lifted into the air. His stomach twisted uneasily.  _ But hopefully when all is said and done, I get to walk out of there alive. _

 

***

 

Hanging over the Commonwealth like a great metal beast, the Prydwen was, undeniably, an impressive sight. Even Hancock had to begrudgingly admit that. He had waited outside the Brotherhood’s med clinic while their doctor saw to Nora, but after an hour or two, the muttered insults and thinly veiled threats from nearly every passerby had begun to test his patience. So, when one young knight told Hancock he “should be put down,” Hancock silently rose to his feet and removed himself to a storage nook under a set of stairs. The alternative was breaking the knight’s arm, and while that would’ve been a satisfying outcome, his victory would be short-lived. The Brotherhood would be all too eager to find out if he could fly, a question Hancock had no interest in testing. Not today. 

He was in  _ their  _ territory, an echo chamber of power-tripping, hateful rhetoric. While he cared very little about the Brotherhood’s opinions, he’d be lying if he said the slurs didn’t get to him.  _ Freak. Monster. Abomination.  _ A second didn’t pass without them reminding him exactly what he was. 

He sprawled out beneath the stairs with his back against the wall, then scoffed to himself. To think the Brotherhood deluded themselves into believing they were the good guys. Maybe most of them even believed it. But all you had to do was follow the trail of charred bodies to see that they didn’t have the people’s best interests at heart. His throat tightened. He just hoped Nora could see it, too.

Once he felt confident that none of the Brotherhood soldiers would stumble onto him, Hancock leaned back and tipped his tricorn down over his eyes. Within moments, his concerns faded into a deep, much-needed sleep. 

When Hancock opened his eyes, he saw Nora smiling down at him. “Nora?”

She raised a finger to her lips — “shhh…” — and sank to the floor beside him. He blinked and looked around, but it had gotten darker since he fell asleep. Were they still on the Brotherhood’s ship? The vague shadow of stairs hung above him, and he tried to remember, but the details felt slippery, fading in and out of memory. He touched her hair. “You’re better?”

Nora wound her arms around his neck and slid into his lap. “Hancock…” she murmured. 

He closed his eyes again, enjoying the warmth of her skin against his. Her lips pressed against his temple and she whispered into his ear. “I’m so lucky I found you.” 

Hancock’s breath hitched as her eyelashes tickled his cheek. He pulled her closer to him. “Nora—” 

“Shh…” she whispered again, raising a hand to cup his face. She ran her thumb over his cheekbone, then leaned in for a kiss. Hancock took her parted lips between his, drinking her in as her tongue traced languid circles on his own.

Curse the wasteland and the Brotherhood of Steel and the Institute — anything that would keep them apart. He never wanted this to end.

He dipped his head to kiss her neck and murmured against her skin, “Can we just stay like this forever?” 

He felt a hot tear spill from his eye and roll down his cheek. Embarrassed, he quickly reached up to wipe it away. But something wasn’t right — his skin felt  _ smooth.  _

“Only one of us gets to live forever,” Nora said, her voice suddenly chilling. Hancock felt a sudden pang of anxiety and his eyes flew open to see blood pouring from Nora’s neck onto his lap.

He woke with a start, covered in cold sweat, and alone. “Shit,” he muttered, pressing a palm to his forehead as the last of the dream faded. Now that he was actually awake, it seemed so obvious he’d been dreaming, but just moments ago it had felt so real. Disoriented, he rose to his feet.

No windows lined the walls of the Prydwen’s main flight deck, but based on the stiffness in his limbs, Hancock guessed he’d been asleep for several hours.  _ Just a dream _ , he told himself, swallowing his unease. Before he could duck out from under the stairs, he heard voices coming. He froze and fell back into a crouch as two Brotherhood soldiers came down the stairs above him. They spoke in hushed voices, just loud enough for him to overhear. 

“—I don’t know how I feel about some of Maxson’s orders. Hostiles, sure, but non-combatants? Civilians?” a nervous female voice said. “Some of the things he says don’t seem right.”

A gruff male voice responded. “I— I know what you mean. But he might be right. We have to be proactive. Strike out first. We can’t risk leaving pockets that could turn into real resistance after we secure power.”

The woman sighed. “But come on… how threatening could a farm run by ghouls or a town full of drifters really be?”

Hancock held his breath.  _ Town full of drifters?  _ Ain’t no other town they could be talking about but Goodneighbor. 

He could practically hear the male Brotherhood soldier shrug. “That’s the point, we just don’t know. And Maxson thinks we can’t risk finding out—” 

The voices faded as the pair left the stairwell, but Hancock had heard enough to set his heart pounding. It was suddenly much more important that he keep his cool and get off the ship alive. Wasn’t just his life at stake anymore, but his whole town’s.

He waited a minute to make sure the soldiers weren’t coming back, then shuffled toward the clinic to check on Nora.

When he entered the small room, he was surprised to find Nora up and about, with no more than a light bandage over her wound. “Hey, I was wondering where you went,” she said, her usual energy returned to her voice.

“You bounce back quick,” Hancock murmured, giving her a weak grin. 

Nora returned his smile but stayed out of arm’s reach. “Yeah, only thanks to the advanced tech they have here. The doc was able to patch me right up.”

Hancock shot a look toward the doctor. “Imagine that.” 

In the wake of sleep, the fluorescent lights in the room were blinding and harsh. The older man shuffled through papers on his desk, seemingly uncomfortable simply sharing the same air as a ghoul. “Well, now that you’re all better, maybe we should get that power armor you wanted and make like a tree—” 

“Actually, can I talk to you privately for a minute?” Nora interrupted, her eyes shifting across the room. 

The doctor met her gaze and adjusted his spectacles. “Umm, yes. I need to go confer with a scribe for a moment, anyway. Excuse me.”

As soon as the door slid shut behind the doctor, Nora closed the space between her and Hancock and took his hands in her own. He let his eyes fall shut and rested his cheek against her hair, breathing her in. “Gave me a helluva scare for a minute.” 

Nora sighed. “Sorry. And thanks for getting me here. I know it’s not a place you want to be…” 

_ I’d walk into the pits of hell if it meant saving you _ , Hancock thought, though he kept it to himself. He considered for a moment telling her what he’d overheard, but no, it was too risky. He’d tell her later, when they  _ weren’t _ in the wolf’s den. “I dunno, I think the Brotherhood’s warming up to me.” 

Nora laughed once before pulling back and meeting his eyes. “You’re not going to like what I have to say.” 

Hancock’s core tightened as though bracing for a blow, and he tried to hide the nerves from his face. In a split-second, a million things he wouldn’t want to hear from Nora flashed through his mind. “Well, don’t leave me hanging…” 

Nora’s brows turned up in the middle. “I think when I go to find the Institute scientist in the Glowing Sea, it should be with Paladin Danse.” 

_ Ouch. _ That ranked up there on the list of things he didn’t want her to say, and her suggestion — or decision, rather — felt like a knife in his gut.

Scoffing, Hancock dropped her hands. “Where’d you get a garbage idea like that?”

His words came out sounding more insulting than he’d meant, so he wasn’t surprised when Nora crossed her arms and scowled. “Danse says he has experience in the Sea. He’d be a good guide.”

“Yeah, but—” Hancock grasped for excuses. His nerves were nothing but frayed edges, and he couldn’t seem to gather his thoughts. _But_ _the Brotherhood are a bunch of A-holes_ just didn’t seem like a convincing argument. “But the Glowing Sea is full of radiation, so, you know, as a _ghoul,_ that’s like my natural arena.”

“Really?” Nora raised her eyebrows. “Danse has power armor and an arsenal of weapons at his disposal. I think we’ll manage.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is this about something else—?”

At that moment, the door swung open and Danse clanked through. He pinned Hancock with an apathetic stare before turning to Nora. “Proctor Ingram has your power armor configured. You ready to set out?”

Nora hesitated, and for a brief moment, Hancock thought she might say no. “Yeah,” she replied slowly. “I’m ready when you are.”

_ Damn.  _

“We’ll drop  _ you  _ off at ground level,” Danse said pointedly to Hancock, leaving no room for discussion. 

Hancock followed Danse and Nora to the main bay and watched Nora as she suited up in the heavy, steel power armor. He wanted to grab her and get a word alone, just for a few seconds, but Danse never gave him the chance. He’d have to wait until after she survived the Glowing Sea. Assuming she did. 

He boarded the vertibird, silently cursing the Brotherhood as the Prydwen disappeared behind a bank of clouds. Their day of reckoning was coming, but first, he and his people needed to prepare. 

The bird landed on top of the leveled remains of a building not far from Goodneighbor. Hancock hopped from the passenger cabin and swung his shotgun over his shoulder, giving Nora a cursory glance. The storm of emotions he felt was too much — hurt, jealousy, fear, longing — and at the moment, there was nothing to say. 

“Be seeing you,” he said, not coldly, but still degrees away from warm.

“Bye, Hancock…”

The hurt in Nora’s voice made him grit his teeth and turn back to face her. “And Nora—?” 

The wind whipped her hair around her lovely face as the vertibird’s rotors reengaged. “Yeah?”

A sudden dread fell over him, more intense than when they’d parted in the past; a fear that this would be the last time he ever saw her. But instead of spilling his guts, he simply said, “Watch yourself out there.” 

Nora flashed him a half-smile and a wave, then disappeared into the cabin. The craft rose into the sky and pitched toward the horizon, tearing a piece of him out as it went and leaving him empty inside.

He ghosted back to the Old State House, mind lost in a haze. 

Fahrenheit was seated in a beat-up chair reading a Hot Rodder magazine when he entered the room. She dropped the magazine to her lap, eyebrows rising. “Boss, didn’t expect you back so soon. What, uh, happened? Where’s Nora?” 

“Forget about her right now,” Hancock growled. “We got bigger problems.” He went straight to his dresser and yanked the top drawer open. Med-X, Jet, Mentats, Buffout— no, there was only one chem that would wash away the drained, depressive state Nora left him in. Only one that would let him be the man Goodneighbor needed. 

Psycho.

“The Brotherhood’s gunning for us. Overheard it myself.” He pulled out the chem and slammed the drawer shut.

Fahrenheit sat up further in her chair. “Oh, shit. You serious? They’re going to attack Goodneighbor?”

Hancock pressed the syringe to his forearm, jaw clenching as the rush of raw aggression entered his veins. When he spoke again, there was more than determination in his voice. There was a promise. 

“They’re going to  _ try.”  _


End file.
